November 23, 2023

In pursuit of the perfect Safety Yellow.

Im looking for the perfect Safety Yellow for MOW trains as one who has never painted Safety Yellow this has been quite the challenge for some reason. With some detective skills and Bard GPT ive come up with a few possible solutions that I think may work.













Vallejo Golden Yellow - Too bright out the bottle, Solution to mix possibly with Red, Purple, Black or other color. 
























Citadel Contrast Imperial Fist - This is a new fancy ass paint thats supposed to solve world hunger and other things. It looks like a good candidate for Safety Yellow from the videos that Ive seen I have high hopes for this. 


















Badger Modelflex Railroad Color Railbox Yellow - This is another one Im holding out hope for as a good shoe in for Safety Yellow. 






Im back on the commuter train kick I guess, Kato 10-1703 inbound

I ordered the Kato 10-1702 by mistake and Ive had it for a while now its grown on me. I usually dont like big sets this is 15 cars large, I like 8 cars or smaller its cheaper. I tried to purchase this set from another place but they didnt have it in stock, So I got it off ebay. I plan on getting the B & C sets eventually to complete the entire set. 




November 15, 2023

Today I got a tiny decoder ESU LokPilot 5 Micro

I want something smaller than the Digitrax DZ126T I really didnt think that there was anything smaller boy was I wrong. I got an ESU LokPilot 5 Micro decoder and boy is that thing small, I would say that its half the size of the DZ126T thats ridiculous to me lol. This decoder will be going in the new Aru Model kit because the DZ126T isnt small enough and doesnt have enough features. 






November 12, 2023

Aru Nine Models


I was pretty scared to take this project on but yesterday I decided to start working on it. 
One tip I can give is to clean the model first so your solder will stick to the metal. 
The build in its entirety wasn't bad to assemble even though the instructions were totally in Japanese. 
This kit takes a KATO 10-105 chassis for power, I added a DZ126T decoder to this kit.





















November 10, 2023

DCC'ing the KATO 11-105 Chassis

This is part of a project with a Aru 9 Models brass Boxcab kind of train which is not based on any prototype. I got the instructions from The N Scale.net the link is below. 



Adding the decoder is fairly straight forward.

  • Gently remove the tan cover. It holds the motor in and adds weight, note the chunk of metal in it..
  • Carefully move the motor out of the way, keeping the drive shaft in constant view. You can't get replacements.
  • Pry up the circuit board off the bottom of the chassis.
  • Remove the two contacts that feed the motor.
  • Solder the Orange and Gray wires to the motor.
  • The tabs are tiny, use lots of flux and pre-tin.You may want to leave longer wires so you could later add diodes or resistors to limit power.
  • Solder the Red and Black wires (leave more wire here too) to the contact strips and pop them back into the chassis. They most likely fell out when you remover the circuit board and motor contacts.
  • If you got a standard decoder with lighting and you want headlights add them now. Otherwise fold the wires up and wrap with tape, you may change your mind later.
  • Put the contact strips back into the chassis.
  • DO NOT REPLACE THE MOTOR CONTACTS.
  • Replace the circuit board
  • Place the motor back in place. Tweezers or forceps will help guide the drive shaft back into the cup.
  • When the motor is settled, snap the tan cover back on.
  • Use tape to attach the extra wires and decoder to the cover.
  • TEST!
  • Figure out how to slow the loco down.
  • Goto 14 until satisfied
  • Reassemble the loco.


These are my pics below and no I havent tested them yet. 
Im thinking about shortening the motor wires and keeping the lighting wires the same. 

The pics below are the shortened wire version, The long wires were bothering me so I shortened them. I left the lighting wires long because there are lights on both sides of the Boxcab.






The pics below are the V1 version of the above with long wires.