Indiana Railroad SD9043MACs

[Gloriousnse]

Latest additions to the roster - a pair of Kato SD9043MACs, INRD9002 and 9005 - detail bits added, some minor paint and a little weathering for effect - DCC chips currently awaited....


SAM_0889 by GloriousNSE, on Flickr

SAM_0887 by GloriousNSE, on Flickr

Painting, some minor work with white was needed to repaint the factory 'eyebrow' handrails and add a white section on the nose tops, wheels were painted brown, a small amount of weathering added around the exhaust, plow and battery boxes.

Flaws? The real INRD units (they now have 14 of these!) are ex CEFX ones with high mounted ditch lights, not low mounted as per the model - not something i'm going to mess with for the moment however...

INRD primarily use these for coal trains, but there are exceptions - for instance one coal train appears to run to the twin cities via CP, with CP using the power on their busy Chicago-Twin Cities corridor whilst the coal train lays over there - there are further examples of units being leased out to parent CSX and reaching as far as Florida!

This is the more usual usage however:


US---INRD-9002---Sullivan_IN---5-31-2009 by Santini52, on Flickr

[torikoos]

That's a nice paint scheme on those SD90's. (and my god those things are huge!)!
Are these showing up in Broadclyst, or will they have to wait a bit longer for a DCC decoder?

Koos

[Gloriousnse]

Yep they are bonkersly big.

Decoders are in the mail i'm told, so they might appear for a quick run, but aren't likely to be properly tweaked by then.

Besides - a bit on the 'overkill' side for the layout we're running there!

[Gloriousnse]

Decoders now in and given some rudimentary tuning, so we'll see what they work like next weekend!

[torikoos]

Cool, what decoder (brand) types did you put in? Sound type or a function/motor control type only?

Koos

[Gloriousnse]

Wanted to try out TCS's new stay-alive fitted ones, so at present they have a pair of KAT12s. I don't have any sound in my fleet at present.

The stay-alive feature is probably (again!) overkill in such huge 6 axle machines, so they may eventually get swapped to something smaller and 'switch-ier' - the effect is quite impressive though, you can take a loco off the track and put it on the mantlepiece and the lights will stay on for more than 10 seconds!

[BrianMoore]

Wanted to try out TCS's new stay-alive fitted ones, so at present they have a pair of KAT12s. I don't have any sound in my fleet at present.

The stay-alive feature is probably (again!) overkill in such huge 6 axle machines, so they may eventually get swapped to something smaller and 'switch-ier' - the effect is quite impressive though, you can take a loco off the track and put it on the mantlepiece and the lights will stay on for more than 10 seconds!

The technology is great, and the concept of marrying one of these up to a sound-only Tsunami would give the best of both worlds. But the problem is, as always, the lack of decoder/speaker space in the smaller engines that would benefit from the "stay alive" part (Stayin' alive, stayin' alive, ah hah etc).

Brian

[Gloriousnse]

These KAT12s are a little on the lumpy side - I suspect they will probably fit into something like an Athearn SW1500 (which is the kind of loco where this tech is great) - but fitting that plus sound is a big ask.

The other brand with stay-alives I've used I was never entirely happy with, although they were arguably a bit more compact...

They do also do versions where the stay alive module and decoder aren't wrapped in the same package, that might give more scope for distributing the gear into various nooks and crannies?

[Mike_R]

My one UP SD90 has a speaker mounted in the dynamic brake area,with a large sealed area behind, makes a good sound.
I'm not convinced by the use of stay-alives, it is rare that I have a loco cut out. If they do it is normally a pickup problem or very dirty wheel issue. I have re-worked pickups and truck mountings on several locos to improve pickup. They are more use in smaller, lighter locos, where it will be harder to fit!

[torikoos]

How do these new TCS decoders stack up programming wise?
I have a few T4X decoders with automatic BEMF, but there's very little in the way of programmability in these, so it does take a lot of experimenting to get them to behave. One issue I've regularly struggled with is that a flywheel equipped locomotive , where the decoder first has to overcome the friction of the gears and the mass of the flywheels, and once moving this needs to adjust. This transition is often not smooth and the loco suddenly 'shoots off'.
I only have experience now with TCS , Tsunami, and QSI decoders (and one NCE decoder purpose made for the P2K SW1200, which is an excellent decoder I have to say, very easy to set up, and the loco works beautifully with it).
Next for me I'd have to try a Lenz and a ESU to see what works best for me. I'm really tempted by the Loksound. (great motor control),and would want that someone in the UK would stock the Loksound Select Direct (currently marketed only in the USA)..

BTW, I've reposted this in the DCC section .

Koos