Class 37, by Accurascale

[Torper]

I've been testing new D6600.  Perhaps I should say at the start that all my other diesels have Zimo decoders, D6600 is my first Loksound one.  I'm not awfully impressed though I imagine that some CV tweaks may be helpful.

 

Sound cut out?  Yes I've had that.  Three times running, then I rebooted the system and it still happened.  I decided to see if the loco would at least run with no sound and it did - than after a few yards sound cut back in again and it has behaved since then.  Hopefully that will continue.

 

Otherwise, I'm disappointed with coasting and braking.  I'm comparing this with my Zimo-equipped Bachmann Class 20 and 24.  These come with Zimo's ActiveDrive system which means that I turn power down to zero and the train will coast along decreasing speed only very gradually.  To bring it to a halt requires application of F2 braking.  I assumed that Lokspound would have somethig similar, but in facy reducing power to zero appears to induce light braking that will bring the train to a much earlier stop than the Zimo system would, and F2 is almost redundant.  Again, I wonder if this could be improved by CV tweaking?

 

Accurathrash sound is very loud - a bit too loud perhaps as it drowns out other sounds such as flange squeal so a sound reduction is required.

 

Ooop!  I've just been down to try the loco again and it's cut out once more on start up.  That really isn't acceptable and I shall be in touch with Accurascale support.  I really don't want a replacement loco as I've managed to convert this one to P4 and it wasn't an easy job!

 

Since typing the above I've reduced CV63 from 192 to 160, and there have been no more sound cutouts.  The "thrash" volume also seems to be a bit more comfortable.

Edited Sunday at 14:42 by Torper

[birdbath]

On 14/09/2024 at 10:03, RBAGE said:

McC,

Two remedies have been discussed so far:

 - turn the volume down on a 4 ohm speaker to reduce the risk of cut out and damage to the amplifier.

- use an 8 ohm speaker which has the same effect as turning down the volume on a 4 ohm.

If you want to maintain the “Accurathrash”, is the solution in the amplifier, not the speaker?

 

Also, we are not being offered a solution to the “rocking” issue. I contacted the support people over a week ago and was promised a detailed instruction for the fix, by the end of that week. Despite repeat contact, I have had nothing. 
Can you please help to speed things up?

In regard to the “rocking” issue, I asked the support a direct question about the cause. I have had no response to that question.

 

Fundamentally, the solutions to both issues go away from the original design of the product. Please confirm that these are based on sound engineering studies and any work you expect customers to undertake will not adversely affect the product or the lifetime guarantee.

 

Bob

 

 

Hi Rob.

I’ve noticed the ‘rocking’ issue on my 37s.  I’ve got three now and they’ve all been the same. Not here to get entangled in the rights/wrongs of responsibility to correct, but I can offer a fairly easy resolution.

 

You have to drop the bogie from the chassis, just enough to access the underside of the metal chassis block. No need to take the wiring connections off, or remove the handbrake chains. There’s a central, conical, locating spigot, which the bogie top locates on. The cause of the rocking is the spigot being ever so slightly too long. This means the bogie doesn’t ride on the side bearing pads, but can rock side to side on them. If you carefully file a bit off the spigot, the chassis will sit down on the bearing pads just right. The trickiest part is getting the drive shafts popped back into the motor flywheels! 
 

Maybe Accurascale could make a slight design adjustment in future releases.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Roge.

[RBAGE]

1 hour ago, birdbath said:

Hi Rob.

I’ve noticed the ‘rocking’ issue on my 37s.  I’ve got three now and they’ve all been the same. Not here to get entangled in the rights/wrongs of responsibility to correct, but I can offer a fairly easy resolution.

 

You have to drop the bogie from the chassis, just enough to access the underside of the metal chassis block. No need to take the wiring connections off, or remove the handbrake chains. There’s a central, conical, locating spigot, which the bogie top locates on. The cause of the rocking is the spigot being ever so slightly too long. This means the bogie doesn’t ride on the side bearing pads, but can rock side to side on them. If you carefully file a bit off the spigot, the chassis will sit down on the bearing pads just right. The trickiest part is getting the drive shafts popped back into the motor flywheels! 
 

Maybe Accurascale could make a slight design adjustment in future releases.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Roge.

Thanks Roge,

Maybe Accurascale can look at this and say yes or no and that it won't affect the warranty.

Regards,

Bob

[G-BOAF]

2 hours ago, birdbath said:

Hi Rob.

I’ve noticed the ‘rocking’ issue on my 37s.  I’ve got three now and they’ve all been the same. Not here to get entangled in the rights/wrongs of responsibility to correct, but I can offer a fairly easy resolution.

 

You have to drop the bogie from the chassis, just enough to access the underside of the metal chassis block. No need to take the wiring connections off, or remove the handbrake chains. There’s a central, conical, locating spigot, which the bogie top locates on. The cause of the rocking is the spigot being ever so slightly too long. This means the bogie doesn’t ride on the side bearing pads, but can rock side to side on them. If you carefully file a bit off the spigot, the chassis will sit down on the bearing pads just right. The trickiest part is getting the drive shafts popped back into the motor flywheels! 
 

Maybe Accurascale could make a slight design adjustment in future releases.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Roge.

 

Is the spigot on the chassis or the bogie?

It would be very helpful if Accurascale could provide replacement parts for this to eliminate this problem.

[RBAGE]

57 minutes ago, G-BOAF said:

 

Is the spigot on the chassis or the bogie?

It would be very helpful if Accurascale could provide replacement parts for this to eliminate this problem.

Or at least a detailed method, with photographs, that I was promise a week and a half ago.

[TravisM]

9 hours ago, Scottish-Exile said:

 

Contact Bachmann. They had loads (a dozen or so) of the Vulcan sets at their pop-up shop at their Collectors Club event at Swanage Railway last weekend. They were marked as seconds, but they didn't seem to be shifting.

Duly sent a email to Bachmann.  Hopefully they will be accommodating 

[SRman]

9 hours ago, Torper said:

I've been testing new D6600.  Perhaps I should say at the start that all my other diesels have Zimo decoders, D6600 is my first Loksound one.  I'm not awfully impressed though I imagine that some CV tweaks may be helpful.

 

Sound cut out?  Yes I've had that.  Three times running, then I rebooted the system and it still happened.  I decided to see if the loco would at least run with no sound and it did - than after a few yards sound cut back in again and it has behaved since then.  Hopefully that will continue.

 

Otherwise, I'm disappointed with coasting and braking.  I'm comparing this with my Zimo-equipped Bachmann Class 20 and 24.  These come with Zimo's ActiveDrive system which means that I turn power down to zero and the train will coast along decreasing speed only very gradually.  To bring it to a halt requires application of F2 braking.  I assumed that Lokspound would have somethig similar, but in facy reducing power to zero appears to induce light braking that will bring the train to a much earlier stop than the Zimo system would, and F2 is almost redundant.  Again, I wonder if this could be improved by CV tweaking?

 

Accurathrash sound is very loud - a bit too loud perhaps as it drowns out other sounds such as flange squeal so a sound reduction is required.

 

Ooop!  I've just been down to try the loco again and it's cut out once more on start up.  That really isn't acceptable and I shall be in touch with Accurascale support.  I really don't want a replacement loco as I've managed to convert this one to P4 and it wasn't an easy job!

 

Since typing the above I've reduced CV63 from 192 to 160, and there have been no more sound cutouts.  The "thrash" volume also seems to be a bit more comfortable.

 

You can adjust the momentum and inertia on CVs 3 and 4 easily. For more coasting, less braking without pressing F2, change whatever value you read in CV4 - make it larger. 
 

On some locos with ESU decoders, I have also adjusted the actual braking action on F2. I don't know the CVs involved for that as I use the visual interface on the LokProgrammer software.

[RBAGE]

So, to help Accurascale in their troubleshooting, as has been suggested, they might try to establish the root cause of the “rocking” or more appropriately, the “kicking”.

I haven’t tried all of my models but all that I have tried have some degree of “rock” if you move it by hand (side to side). However, I have not detected “kicking” on other models. It might be concluded that the cause of the “kicking” is not this excess play. I expect this is part of the design to minimise “rock”.

That said, and as I suggested earlier here, and direct to Accurascale, maybe there is some other cause. After all, it isn’t a feature of all models.

Anyhow, I suggest that motor performance should be investigated. For example, is there some variation in the motor, is there some stiction or interference in motor or drive train, is there some momentary interruption of power supply to the motor when power is first applied after direction change (pickup issue)?

These are the sort of things that should be considered. If it was the gap between the pips and a bearing surface and all models have this gap, it stands to reason that without some other influence all models would “kick”.

To add a shim to fill the gap or reduce the spigot height will minimise “kicking” but it’s disguising another issue that should be addressed.

Just my thoughts.

Bob

Edited Monday at 08:16 by RBAGE

[birdbath]

16 hours ago, G-BOAF said:

 

Is the spigot on the chassis or the bogie?

It would be very helpful if Accurascale could provide replacement parts for this to eliminate this problem.

Just had a look at the next one I’m going to do. To refresh my memory and add a bit more detail to my previous post…

 

There are actually three spigots that protrude from the bottom of the chassis block. I’m fairly certain these are part of the casting. The two outside ones are shorter and should bear on the flat top of the bogie. The longer, central spigot locates in a hole in the top of the bogie. But it bottoms out in the hole before the side spigots touch the bearing surfaces, causing the potential to rock side to side.

 

Its the longer one needs filing down slightly. Probably only needs 0.5mm or so.

 

To be clear, I’ve not experienced any loss of performance having done this. The bogies still pivot freely. It still negotiates Peco trackwork with no issue.

 

I guess 99% of people aren’t bothered. But I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s picked up on it!

[G-BOAF]

2 hours ago, birdbath said:

Just had a look at the next one I’m going to do. To refresh my memory and add a bit more detail to my previous post…

 

There are actually three spigots that protrude from the bottom of the chassis block. I’m fairly certain these are part of the casting. The two outside ones are shorter and should bear on the flat top of the bogie. The longer, central spigot locates in a hole in the top of the bogie. But it bottoms out in the hole before the side spigots touch the bearing surfaces, causing the potential to rock side to side.

 

Its the longer one needs filing down slightly. Probably only needs 0.5mm or so.

 

To be clear, I’ve not experienced any loss of performance having done this. The bogies still pivot freely. It still negotiates Peco trackwork with no issue.

 

I guess 99% of people aren’t bothered. But I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s picked up on it!

Presumably filing down the spigot (or drilling out the hole in the bogie?) would result in the loco being lowered slightly, which (in theory) could impact wheel clearances, etc (although you suggest not), or prototypical ride height. I would be reluctant to start cutting parts off the chassis in terms of warranty etc in the future. I would also be worried about plough clearances if the loco is now 0.5mm nearer the track.

It sounds like a proper fix is the top of the bogie should be raised to be in contact with the side spigots, again a modification from Accurascale to the bogie top and provision of replacement corrected parts, or provision of the right thickness of packing to resolve this.

Or the spigots made longer (which presumably would require a new chassis block)

 

It is strange that this was not resolved in Batch 2.

[LNERandBR]

16 minutes ago, G-BOAF said:

It is strange that this was not resolved in Batch 2.

 

Depends if people reported their issues to Accurascale Support or just implemented their own fixes.

 

There is a saying where I work. If it's not on the ticket it didn’t happen.

 

So if many people have an issue but only a couple raise it with support then Accurascale won't know there's something that needs changing on future runs. Especially if it's something which sounds very dependent on how each particular model has been assembled.

[birdbath]

52 minutes ago, G-BOAF said:

Presumably filing down the spigot (or drilling out the hole in the bogie?) would result in the loco being lowered slightly, which (in theory) could impact wheel clearances, etc (although you suggest not), or prototypical ride height. I would be reluctant to start cutting parts off the chassis in terms of warranty etc in the future. I would also be worried about plough clearances if the loco is now 0.5mm nearer the track.

It sounds like a proper fix is the top of the bogie should be raised to be in contact with the side spigots, again a modification from Accurascale to the bogie top and provision of replacement corrected parts, or provision of the right thickness of packing to resolve this.

Or the spigots made longer (which presumably would require a new chassis block)

 

It is strange that this was not resolved in Batch 2.

Yes, that all makes sense. 
 

I’m not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do. This has worked for me. I could post a load of pictures asking you to spot the difference between one I’ve done and one I haven’t, etc. But I’m not really that bothered. 
 

Starting to wish I hadn’t bothered mentioning it at all!

[G-BOAF]

14 minutes ago, birdbath said:

Yes, that all makes sense. 
 

I’m not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do. This has worked for me. I could post a load of pictures asking you to spot the difference between one I’ve done and one I haven’t, etc. But I’m not really that bothered. 
 

Starting to wish I hadn’t bothered mentioning it at all!

Sorry for any unintended offence. My response wasn't aimed at being critical to your solution. It sounds like you have been innovative and successful in solving this, and got to the bottom of where the 'error' in tooling or assembly lies.

 

Edited Monday at 13:48 by G-BOAF

[RBAGE]

1 hour ago, LNERandBR said:

 

Depends if people reported their issues to Accurascale Support or just implemented their own fixes.

 

There is a saying where I work. If it's not on the ticket it didn’t happen.

 

So if many people have an issue but only a couple raise it with support then Accurascale won't know there's something that needs changing on future runs. Especially if it's something which sounds very dependent on how each particular model has been assembled.

I'll refer you back to an earlier post of mine where I shared exchanges with Accurascale support in February. If it's not on the ticket, it's not for the want of trying.

So, they are clearly aware that there was something wrong with run 1. 

[Melton Works]

On 15/09/2024 at 13:45, TravisM said:

I recently had my Bachmann Class 37, 37558/XH558 set stolen and as they are as rare as hens teeth now and are commanding silly prices, I was wondering if either Accurascale's 37402 or 409 are correct body style etc, and just a simple renumber?  Maybe SRPS 37403 (I already have one on order and maybe order another one if available) might be a good candidate?

I have actually done this with 402. The hardest bit was cutting out the bodyside window. Ariel and lamp bracket removed too. But this is the closest donor in my opinion. 

[acg5324]

I’ve spent today dropping CV63 to 150 on over 20 sound fitted locos to cure the sound cutting out on start up. This was an issue with the first batch too. 

[The Meerkat]

14 minutes ago, acg5324 said:

I’ve spent today dropping CV63 to 150 on over 20 sound fitted locos to cure the sound cutting out on start up. This was an issue with the first batch too. 

 

i put new 8ohm speaker in today, i ask AS support if i leave it at 150 or put it back to factory settings 192, they said test it and when your happy, you can put it back to 192, for me so far so good  

[RBAGE]

The sound output from an 8 ohm speaker is less than that of a 4 ohm. So, the end result is to reduce the volume either way.

[derekdoestrains]

7 minutes ago, RBAGE said:

The sound output from an 8 ohm speaker is less than that of a 4 ohm. So, the end result is to reduce the volume either way.

but no cutting out so it’s 100% better than no sound :)

[spamcan61]

8 minutes ago, RBAGE said:

The sound output from an 8 ohm speaker is less than that of a 4 ohm. So, the end result is to reduce the volume either way.

I'd say for a given output current (assuming the ESU audio amp has an over current trip, which I'm pretty sure it will have) then double the impedance = double the watts for a given current. So assuming the same efficiency for an 8 ohm speaker as a 4 ohm speaker then the 8 ohm will be 3dB SPL louder. Not a huge difference but audible

Edited Monday at 18:57 by spamcan61

[The Meerkat]

does the colas 37s only pull test trains or do they do other work?

[NickL2008]

6 minutes ago, The Meerkat said:

does the colas 37s only pull test trains or do they do other work?

 

37175 worked this earlier this year..

 

Picture copyright wilbert B

 

NL

[derekdoestrains]

8 minutes ago, The Meerkat said:

does the colas 37s only pull test trains or do they do other work?

they run round doing route learning as well…

[The Meerkat]

thank you very much for all that info

[Wayne 56089]

Will be working the RHTT trains in Yorkshire this year as DRS don’t own any 37s anymore to supply them.