3801 SAMPLE ARRIVES IN TIME FOR ROSEHILL EXHIBITION

 The final engineering sample of the re-run of the Eureka Models' NSWGR 38 class has arrived. The sample is production ready with only minor details such as wheel and buffer blackening to be carried out when out-sourced parts for the production run are delivered. 
  

 The sample was quickly put to work and ran very well with no issues when tested under DC. It has now been handed over to our DCC team (Terry Flynn and John Zubrickas) for a Zimo decoder to be fitted and sound files installed.

On the subject of decoders, the 38s will be fitted with a Zimo MS440C decoder which is the same decoder used in the recent re-run of our AD60. This has proved to be a superior decoder and the Zimo people have turned out to be a real pleasure with which to work with nothing we asked for being a problem for them. As with the AD60, it is our intention to make replacement printed circuit boards available for anyone wanting to up-grade an original 38 to the equivalent of the latest run by installing a Zimo decoder. This can be done by contacting John Zubrickas on johnezee@gmail.com.

The 38 class sample complete with Zimo decoder and sound is expected to be running on the Waterfall layout at Rosehill exhibition this coming weekend.

The factory is saying that they will send us a full set of decoration samples at the end of October and that they expect to deliver the complete production run before Chinese New Year.  

   

 TS CHENNAI COMES AND GOES AT PORT BOTANY

 In my last Blog I resumed an old custom by featuring a photograph of the ship that was bringing the latest shipment of product from our manufacturer in China, in this case, the latest re-run of our AD60 class Garratt locomotive. 
At the time of publication of that blog, the Chennai was steaming around in circles of the coast from Newcastle due to all the berths in Port Botany having container ships alongside and it was not until 4.00 am on Saturday that the Chennai was able to tie up and start unloading at Botany.
As this blog is being put together on Sunday night, TS Chennai has left Port Botany for Melbourne hopefully having left all its cargo including AD60s on the wharf for it to pass through customs before being delivered to waiting customers including us here at Eureka Models.
When delivered, the 740 AD60s will join the few units left from the shipment which was delivered by air two weeks ago.
The process followed then is a little bit time consuming but basically all units are un-boxed and given a quick inspection. This production run is proving to be of a very high standard and is well packed so very few issues are being found in this inspection process.
In fact in past production runs of locomotives no local inspections are usually carried out and the inspections done at the factory are relied on for quality control. However, in this case as will be discussed below there was a good reason to open and run each locomotive so a quick inspection was easy to add to the process. 

As this process began it was quickly discovered that the three plastic blister packs are almost identical and difficult to tell apart when putting the locomotive units back in their box. To help this process Eureka Models quickly had labels printed which named the front, middle and rear units. As the three units are removed from their blister packs, each blister pack has the identifying label attached making the re-boxing process a whole lot easier.

The main reason for the un-boxing process is the chuff-rate set as default in the Zimo chip. After testing the early production run units received from the factory it was generally accepted that the chuff-rate had been set too fast on the AD60 as delivered. The chuff-rate is easily changed on a Zimo decoder, or it is if you know what to do and have a DCC system that can do it as just about every commercially available system can. After toying with the idea of putting a leaflet in each AD60 to explain how to do it, it was decided to bite the bullet and make the change "in house" as part of the above process. It is a simple and straight forward process, CV 267 is changed to a value of 120 (CV 267 sets the chuff-rate and the default value is 80 on the decoder.)  The new value results in a much more realistic synchronisation between sound and motion. It slows the post and packing process down but we think it is worth the effort.
One issue will be that whenever a locomotive has its factory defaults restored the chuff-rate (CV 267) will be re-set to 80 and will have to be changed to 120 for the more satisfactory chuff-rate to apply.

One other issue that cropped up involved the in-ability to tell a with-sound middle unit from a non-sound middle unit. Fortunately, Zimo came to the rescue by providing  "Zimo on board" stickers and during the above process one of these stickers is added to the underneath of the middle unit of all "with sound" units to help with the identification process.
 
The customs process should see the AD60 currently sitting in Port Botany delivered to the Eureka Models offices by the middle of this week and the remaining pre-orders can then be filled and retailers will then quickly receive stock in quantity. It will also mean that Eureka Models will have plenty of stock at Rosehill exhibition on the 25th of October. 

 

                                       6007 having its chuff-rate tested.

    

   

 

 

 

WELL, SO MUCH FOR COVID:

Hi all, it has been four years since my last blog and four years since Covid came and sort of went. ( I had  five days in hospital with it last year.)
In a way, much has happened in those four years and in another way not much has happened at all in that time.
For the first two years virtually nothing happened with Eureka Models in China and it was not until late 2023 that things began to move again. Visits to China resumed in 2024 and it is only now that anything like a normal routine is occurring between Eureka Models and its manufacturers in China.
There were a number of factors that contributed to this state of affairs and a number of these factors will be touched on in future blogs but for the moment suffice is to say that our two main manufacturers are each currently working on several projects with more on the horizon. Again, future blogs will deal with these.

On the subject of future communications, The Eureka Times will remain our main vehicle for maintaining contact with the over 4500 customers on our database. Due to the costs involved it will not be generally posted out and will be distributed almost entirely by email. Issues have been a little bit in-frequent these past few years but ET will certainly continue to be published hopefully on a more regular basis now that more is happening in China.

The NSWGR AD60 class Beyer-Garratt locomotive 2nd Re-run.   

One of the things encouraging the preparation of this blog has been the arrival by air of 200 units from the latest re-run of Eureka Model's popular AD60 class Beyer-Garratt locomotive. These units have largely gone to pre-orders however, the remaining 800 units of the run are due to arrive in Post Botany  on the 17th of October which means they should be in our hands the following week in time to be on had at the Rosehill exhibition.

As allways, given the team here at the Eureka Offices' interest in things shipping, below is a photo of TS Chennai, the container ship bringing its cargo from a port on the Pearl River (Shenzhen) which includes the AD60s to Port Botany. TS Chennai today arrived at Fisherman's Island Wharf in Morton Bay and is unloading containers before making its way down the east coast to Port Botany later this week  

For those who are interested, the following are those units available in the current re-run. As always, I suspect that I got the break-up of the production run wrong as we are being swamped with orders for 6029 in NSW Transport Heritage livery. This will almost certainly be the first number to sell out.

6001 Black with red lining.
6007 and 6016 "ex works" black with red lining.
6020 Centenary Colours.
6027, 6032 and 6036 Plain black, long bunker, sound tubes.
6029 As preserved ACT ARHS.  ACT herald, City of Canberra and ARHS name boards. 
6029 As preserved NSW Transport Heritage in plain black OR black with red lining. Both                                                                                                                            with name boards.

All the above units are available with or without sound. 

Here is a nice video of some of the units available in this run:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jyNmI6tVFE. 

Plenty of good feed back coming in already with the most pleasing being comments on the improved sound  in this run. The better sound was one of the first impressions that I had of this re-run and this I think is due to the Zimo decoder which utilises 20 year newer technology and as importantly, the improved sound files put together by long time Friday-night Rambler, Terry Flynn who did an excellent job. Thanks Terry.

Future blogs will deal with projects underway in China as news comes from the manufacturers. The next project to arrive will be the 38 class re-run which the factory said this week they are aiming to deliver before the end of the year. (Chinese New Year that is.)
As part of this process the factory has this week forwarded another engineering sample which should be on display at Rosehill exhibition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 AND YOU THOUGHT CHINA WAS THE PROBLEM:

 

    The recently published Eureka Times 36 outlined some of the difficulties experienced recently in the model railway manufacturing industry in China. 

    With the log jam starting to break up in China, the scheduling department here at the Eureka offices decided it was time to order a fairly large quantity of the no. 158 Kadee couplers which are the standard coupler used on all Eureka Models projects.

     So it was on Monday the 19th of March that an email ordering  the required KDs was forwarded to the Kadee offices in the US. Nothing out of the ordinary here and Kadee usually process the order and forwards the ordered items within 48 hours.  (Eureka has the couplers sent to it in Australia and  then has the couplers delivered, one way or another to the factory in China. In the good old days there were less problems on items from Australia to China than the US to China but this may no longer be the case and of course hand delivery is currently not an option.) 

     This delivery issue may be a problem for the future as on the next evening the usual curteous reply was received from Kadee acknowledging the order and pointing out that they had lost six months production last year due to the virus and that they had not been able to catch up yet. With orders coming in as manufacturers started to get production moving again they were six months behind in deliveries and so we cold expect delivery in August or September.

   Other manufacturers are reporting similar experiences and there is not much that can be done about it. Actually, this may not hold up projects all that much but it just another thing to be taken into account.

    In a similar vein, talk to any retailer and they tell similar stories with regard to major brands from overseas such as Peco, Micro-Engineering etc. so while we may be focused on China it is in fact a world wide problem.

  

      

     

SOUND CONSIDERATIONS:

    With projects starting to move again at the factories in China the question of what to do about decoders in the three or four projects that will require sound over the next twelve months has been exercising the minds of the staff in the sound section here at the Eureka offices recently.

     Normally, this would not be  problem as QSI would be the automatic choice as decoder manufacturer following the successful use of QSI decoders in the first seven sound equipped models released by Eureka Models. However, it appears that QSI no longer supplys DCC decoders to OEMs in the model train industry. Eureka is trying to have this confirmed at the moment but given that QSI is likely to not be available, consideration is being given to alternative manufacturers.

    The projects coming up that will require sound include steam engines, a diesel and rail motors so consideration will have to be given to the physical location of the decoders. It may be possible in the case of the diesel for example to utilise an existing commercially available decoder which fits in the existing diesel body without the need for tooling changes and consequent cost savings.    

    The decoders used in the first seven Eureka projects all used an eight pin connector. If this is to be continued there are two manufacturers who produce commercially available decoders and who have good market acceptance:

These two are: 

                a.    ESU (Loksound5).

and

                b.    Zimo

A third option involving the use of a 21 pin connector is

                c.    Soundtraxx Econami ECO-PNP  This involves a replacement PCB with inbuilt decoder. This board for example will fit in the footprint available in the 40 class chassis for the current PCB. The Econami ECO-PNP for diesels includes inbuilt sound files for an Alco 244 engine and Nathan horns, so would not require the provision of new sound files which would be required by the other two manufacturers.

    Each of the above have their advantages and disadvantages both from the supply point of view and the fitting/manufacture point of view with associated cost impacts. Another consideration involves the country of manufacturer. China is a heavily protected  economy and getting decoders made outside China into that country can at times be quite challenging (see post on Kadee couplers) so any of the above decoders manufactured has an advantage.

   The sound department of Eureka Models is currently examining each of the contenders and is expected to make a recommendation shortly.