Guess the Glitch - E5 Hayabusa

[Webskipper]

I noticed smoke coming from under the first cab car. Person nearest to the switch must have closed it before the train arrived. Immediately I rolled the whole E5 onto it's side, fearing heat throughout.  Too late the cab1 trucks were lying on the ties.

Another basic set is reserved so there is an upside to this tearful story. Second nose coupler, replacement trucks, and parts galore.

Since the train ran the same tracks before and derailed on closed switches before, what electronic glitch did this to my new train?

[keitaro]

are you running dcc ? shouldn't have much to do with issue but good to know.

i have my E5 run over switches all the time and some time closed off incorrectly and train is fine?

by closed  wron i mean the point is saying to turn out left heading that way <---- on switch but the train comes running -----> right through when it shouldn't and doesn't derail or have heating issues.

Do you think perhaps the e5 has a issue with the pickup system for the lights?

[Webskipper]

Yes running on DCC double 00.

The Kato decoders never arrived in last week's hobby shop shipment. Never had an issue running DC on DCC 00.

[westfalen]

Same thing happened to me with a truck under one of the cars of my Kato Imperial train and a tender truck of my GS4, my brother melted the front engine truck of a Life Like 2-8-8-2. A good power management system to protect from shorts is a good investment when running DCC, the command station often doesn't cut out quick enough or doesn't detect partial shorts that can still generate enough heat to melt plastic trucks.

[The_Ghan]

I noticed smoke coming from under the first cab car.

Mate!  DCC?  Were you doing laps at the time or stationary?

Person nearest to the switch must have closed it before the train arrived.

Where were you?  Club or home?  Geez!  Who is "person nearest to the switch"?  I know there's a bit of a stranger in my household - his name is "Not-Me!"  Not-Me is responsible for a whole host of things here ... When I ask "Who left the light on" someone is sure to shout out "Not-Me!".  Who's been using my subway? "Not-Me!", of course, is the answer.  If I ever get my hands on Not-Me, God help him!!!

'Skipper - I'm sorry for your loss man!  Perhaps you can use the rest of the car to stage a rail accident - not very prototypical for Japan, I know!

Cheers

The_Ghan

[Bernard]

Never saw that happen before! From the photo it seems like the only damage was to the from wheels...was there any other damage?

[Kumo]

Never saw that happen before! From the photo it seems like the only damage was to the from wheels...was there any other damage?

The bogie seems melted too unfortunately. :-/

Isn't it possible to get the bogie only (or to take it from another set)?

[David]

The bogie plus wheels should be listed as a replacement part in the instructions - for the non-geared trucks you usually get a package with 2 bogies+wheels.

[KenS]

Wow. Sorry to hear about that.

This sounds like DCC: a short that failed to trip the command station/booster's circuit breaker.

1. Check the track near the switch with the "quarter test" (place a quarter firmly across the rails).  The breaker should trip immediately.  If the quarter "sings" (vibrates) you've got a problem.

Failures to short can be caused by excessive resistance in the wiring.  Either the bus is too long, or too small a gauge for the length (mostly an issue on club layouts), or the feeder is too far away and there's excessive resistance in the track.  If you have a voltage meter (DC or DCC), check the difference between measuring it at the output of the command station or booster, and at the switch; it shouldn't be more than a couple of volts less.

The other possibility is that the trip level was too high, and the short was a partial one and didn't let enough current through to trip the breaker, but did let enough through to damage the car.  There's not much you can do about this with some systems, but with others the trip level is settable. If you're only running a few N-scale trains at a time (and depending on the trains, "a few" could be 10), you could set the level as low as 1 Amp (probably not less).  If you're running a lot of trains, you could add circuit breakers around the layout, each feeding a section that wouldn't have more than a few trains. 

However, there's another issue to watch out for, if current draw is too close to the breaker level the breaker will be slower to trip (it's the rise in current that causes the protection to be imposed, and in at least some types that's harder to detect if there's less of a gap between the "normal" level and the trip point).

[Webskipper]

The Club's system is all Digitrax. What type of additional Protection can be installed on top of what's there? Redundancy like in Aviation.

I am Not-me and I share the same name with everyone involved. I mean it was not 5 minutes after I set up the E5 did a freight train go loco and did a Duke Boy roll over on the end cab. Not my doing he turned the handheld controller the opposite way of STOP. Not a good day. Maybe the Goddess of Destruction was in the Art Gallery we were in?

Stay tuned.... them Duke Boys are up to something.

After a full disassembly, I can say that the Interior 11-210 LED and Cab LED survived. I figured that the short went up and over to the rear bogie and fried that without affecting the lighting. Parts? Where do you get parts for a brand new model? usually parts are released many months after model's debut.

The nose coupler mechanisms can be installed into the other cab including the nose piece quick release. Everything in life has an upside.

[KenS]

The Club's system is all Digitrax. What type of additional Protection can be installed on top of what's there? Redundancy like in Aviation.

Digitrax sells the PM42, which is four circuit breakers on one board for $80.  I'm in the process of installing a bunch of these. You can set it to trip as low as 1.5 Amps.

But a DCC circuit breaker is just a DCC circuit breaker.  Unless you care about using loconet to know the status of the circuit breaker, you can also use something like the Powershield, of which I've read good reviews. You can get it in versions with 1 to 4 breakers from $35. The trip current can apparently be set as low as 1.27 Amps.

NCE also makes one I've seen as low as $25, but it's only adjustable down to 2.5 Amps.  And I'm sure there are others.

In any case, you wire the circuit breaker between the command station/booster and any occupancy detector, close to the feeder(s) it protects.

[The_Ghan]

KenS,

You're installing a bunch?  How big is your layout man?  You should comfortably run 10 or more trains on 1.5A, shouldn't you? 

I use 1 PM42 as discussed in another thread.  For blocks with points/turn outs/switches I put a 1A automotive fuse between the track and the BDL168s just in case of a derailment. I don't really know if it will help because I've not yet had a problem ... but I feel safer .... kind of like a parachute in an avalanche, perhaps!!!

Cheers

The_Ghan

[rpierce000]

I guess we know who will have the first Tsunami and Earthquake diorama...

You need some Uranium 1.4875 to run the nuke plant. That should power the layout...

I hope you can get some new trucks. If you send me the part number I will ask my new Japanese dealer to grab some.

Bob

[KenS]

I'm seriously into overkill on circuit breakers. 

It's not the amps.  At most one PM42 quadrant would be running two trains, which is about 0.2 Amps with lights.  It's about isolation, so that a problem on one track doesn't affect another when the breaker trips.  Each of my scenes has three double-tracks, but one is the continuous running Shinkansen track, which has one breaker per track for the whole oval. The other four tracks have one PM42 quadrant per scene (sort of).  Thus I need at least one PM42 per scene, and in the two large stations I actually wound up with two of them to cover sidings and branch lines.

I expect to have a total of 7 or 8 PM42s on the layout.  So far I've wired two, and I have several more awaiting time to connect them.

Partly this is to set me up for eventual use of sound decoders.  One thing I learned on my HO layout is that sound decoders sound silly when they reboot because you ran a train somewhere else the wrong way into a switch set against you and the circuit breaker trips and resets.  It's bad enough with one train running through the couple-clank compressor-chug start-up sequence. But a half dozen?  I'm aiming for one train per circuit breaker under normal circumstances.

I'd expect the auto fuse to work.  Neat idea, although I run wrong-way into switches far too often to use them.

[Webskipper]

That sounds like a plan.

When my train was melting it affected all 4 tracks for a while.

Whose to say being connected to the other clubs modules didn't affect something.

[Webskipper]

Um, never saw this one.

Went to run my first bullet, a Kato 10-491 and the front bogie was melted into the flarings. @#$%&* Of course it is a totally different bogey than my spare E5. Yup it happened last month when the club's ntrak system was having all kinds of issues. This baby was running on the mountain line by itself. Never saw the smoke, no switches to jump, no signs it wanted to slow down.

Where do I get parts for a 2004 train? Need a Kato 4356F or 4356TD bogie set.

Well, that kills plans to build 2 real Ntrak tables this weekend to transfer my downtown train stations.

I may as well just buy another Tsubame because it is only a matter of time before something else happens.

[Webskipper]

Wow, parts for the Japanese Bullets really do exist.

Found the Kato 800 series trucks. Stock number is not the same as the manual. Original trucks are out of production.

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10152321

[Webskipper]

Just got them in. Perfect. Thinking these might be the ones for the newly designed Kato 800 Bullet trains.