How would I do these smol NS electrics in N?

[Jim Starbuck]

I'm curious what that 50 tonner looks like.

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[Iain]

Yeah, that looks much larger.

[Jim Starbuck]

Iain,

I tried to get an ai model from your original photos but it didn’t render well. I’ll clean up the photos and try it again.

[randgust]

That NS one has such a low hood profile it's a difficult one to get a gear tower under.

I still have a Shapeways shell and a box of parts for Randy's unfinished one.   Depends on your 'close enough', but the degree of difficulty on modeling something like that gets in the way of the mechanism.   I think to model yours exactly the boxcar pusher looks like an excellent idea.

The shell I have appears to be this one:  https://www.american-rails.com/images/40524078_1982537505371510_8581452624295886848_n.jpg
and we reprinted it to have the hoods just wide enough to clear the Tomytec truck towers on the inside, same mechanism concept as the 456.

If the Jamestown, Westfield & Northwestern had a steeplecab, I'd keep and build it  but they didn't.   This was theirs:
https://www.thedieselshop.us/JWNW_400-TStarr.jpg

We were hip deep in trolleys and interurbans around here.

[dem34]

Probably have to the Hobbytown Boston thing where you mount a coreless motor vertically in the cab, stick a worm in the center under the cab, then run 2 drive lines on universals to the trucks. But the issue with that is that the mech will be visible from low angles.

[Iain]

So, I was looking at these:

https://www.plazajapan.com/4952844143213/

[Jim Starbuck]

So, I was looking at these:

https://www.plazajapan.com/4952844143213/

I think you’re onto something there. Those are the shortest trucks I’ve seen.

[Chris333]

What is the WB and dia?  They are for the Kato Tokyu Electric Railway 5050.

Better pics: https://jp.mercari.com/item/m99689046137

[peteski]

What the real challenge is is getting any weight on it for tractive effort and pickup. You'd want a big slug of something in the cab.  And of course there's like zero room for a decoder, unless maybe you stuffed a DZ126T under the cab like I do on my Climax A's.

Randy,
There are decoders even smaller than DZ126T. They might do the trick.

[robtracy]

TCS do a really small decoder, the Z2 and Lais decoders also do a very small decoder as well. The same size as the TCA Z2. I have used both these decoders in HO locomotives and they perform well. About the size of a small fingernail.

[peteski]

TCS do a really small decoder, the Z2 and Lais decoders also do a very small decoder as well. The same size as the TCA Z2. I have used both these decoders in HO locomotives and they perform well. About the size of a small fingernail.

Z2 has a firmware bug which makes it behave strangely at certain speed steps. This was few years ago. I talked to the TCS reps about it at a Springfield show and they confirmed the problem. Maybe they fixed the problem in more recent production runs, but since the firmware in those decoders is not user-upgradable and they did not offer  to exchange them (when the problem is fixed), I no longer use TCS decoders.

CT Elektronik also makes a very small decoder (Dcx77z at 7.5x5x1.8 mm) which is tiny bit smaller than ZIMO MX615.

[randgust]

For this project I don't think that's the issue, figuring out how to power the trucks with no overhead space for gear towers and minimal motor space is.

My original DCC episode was with a Z2 trying to make a Kato 11-105 chassis motor perform well.   Complete fail.  Surging.  Warranty return, twice.   Sent it to another modeler to test on a different command station and better skills, same result, even after removing BEMF, other tweaks.   It was told to me by their tech support, in writing, that my Climax A locomotive was simply 'too small' to work under DCC.   Bah.

Went to a DZ126T and have never looked back, those have worked great for me.    I've done three different decoder brands now, those are the 'straight vanilla' installs on older units where I have to hotwire everything.  Not saying another won't work, or might be even smaller, but when you get a reliable result and know a product, you stick with it.

One of the coolest parts ever invented by Kato was the transverse gear tower in the NW2, allowing the low driveshafts to meet in the middle and spur gear to where the motor was above the driveshaft.   Kato never sold it as a replacement part.   Something like that, with those low-driveshaft trucks, and a tiny gearhead motor driving the spur.

Check out the photo of the lower driveshaft on Spookshow.....connecting the two trucks with the motor ABOVE it. 
https://www.spookshow.net/loco/katonw2.html

I've been studying that for a long, long time on my Heisler concept.

[Iain]

So, I was looking at these:

https://www.plazajapan.com/4952844143213/

Yeah, I was thinking something like these trucks with the Kato NW2 drive.  I'm putting together an order with enough other things to justify the shipping and will report back when I have the trucks in hand.

I have a motor that might possibly work; it's short and kinda wide but not too wide.  It might even leave room in the top of the cab for a decoder.

[Sokramiketes]

Chris,
Mike used to put that steeplecab on the Waterford Ave bridge as a stand in until I built the TMER&L L4.
I could ask him if he still has it to see what it is.

You guys have it right.  It was a Tomytec unit and fit on a TM-0x series drive.  I thought it looked like a good starting point for a North Shore unit when I bought it.  But Randy solved all the CNS&M projects much more eliquently.  I wish I knew what was happening to his collection of N scale models.

[dem34]

Lokpilot Nano with an Iowa Scaled Engineering Run-N-Smooth taped into a little stacker fits anywhere and gives good performance even if you feel too lazy to do all wheel pickup.