Installing LocoFi in a KATO EMD GP35 Phase Ia Norfolk Southern.pdf

Here is a clip I uploaded to YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/FcgPGgi3evQ

Enjoy and comment. The layout is a work in progress!

Installing LocoFi in a KATO EMD GP35 Phase Ia Norfolk Southern #1308 37-034

As in my earlier write up on RS2, I use the same material and remove some parts to make room for the LocoFi board (LF). In this case, I had to remove the weight, the rear light pipe and the light board. They go in the box for future-if it becomes necessary. I use the same type of 2xSMD LEDs for the back and just 1 for the front. The rear LEDs are sitting in the 2 holes that had the light pipe protrusions. The front LED is secured to the original light pipe with a piece of heat shrink tubing.

LEDs on power:

Power connections with heat shrink:

Motor brush connections are insulated from the power connections. I do not cut or alter any of the original connections as much as possible. The motor connections are with the original PB strips and they need to have some springiness to make sure the connections near the brush holders are not loose. The power connections are tinned in the middle for later connections to the LF wires.

Using plastic card for motor brush connections:       

LocoFi in place and wiring:

The plastic card is secured with 1 screw from the light board.

The front light pipe helps in keeping the LF board in place. I pack the sides with “HandiTak” instead of using any glue so that everything can be easily returned to the original connection, if necessary.

Spare parts! Rear light pipe, light board and weight. Even without the weight, this loco is fairly heavy and has good traction.

Installing LocoFi in a KATO ALCO RS2.pdf

This is a clip I made for the RS 2 and posted on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/YuuK7ufdg2Y

Please comment. Thanks.

Installing LocoFi in a KATO ALCO RS2-Great Northern #217 37-2302

The instruction sheet included says that to remove the body shell, one has to remove the hand rails (so that it is easier to squeeze the shell without breaking the hand rails) and squeeze the body shell and pull it out from the frame. In some of the KATO locos this is true but in this case, it is not. It in fact, will break the tabs, if it is done this way! The tabs need to be forced outwards from the frame by inserting a thin metal piece of some sort from the bottom, next to the trucks.

Once the shell is out, remove the light board, front weight and front light pipe as below. These will go to the spares box for safe keeping as we need to make some space for LocoFi.

The LocoFi unit will sit nicely above the motor in the middle of the engine compartment but, the clearance is just a couple of mm short due to the motor height and the shell will not close properly. Hence, I had to move it all the way to the front. That makes for the removal of the parts mentioned earlier.

I also use “HandiTak” to hold things in place rather than any glue, so that I can return the loco to the original condition, if needed later.  Never know when and if I would want to sell one of these!

The KATO motor has no wires. Instead, they use thin, flat, springy, Phosphor-Bronze strips from the light board to the motor brush holders. If they do not have the springiness, the contact near the brush holder will be loose. To avoid this, I use a strip of plastic (like from and old credit card), make two holes and bring the PB strips up through them and solder the wires to them. The supply wires are also under the yellow stuff and are soldered at the bottom near the pickups, as below. They are all under the yellow stuff in the pictures below.

Front light: I used one of those tiny LEDs (SMD type that comes with leads). As I had to push the LF board all the way to the front, there was not enough space to use an LED from the kit. I have packed around it with the yellow goop so that it can be centered within the hole. I punched a piece of plastic to put over it to act like a lens (not seen here).

Speaker: This was somewhat easy as it has enough space above the interior detail in the cab. But due to close fitting between the cab interior part and the protruding section from the engine housing, I had to create a tiny “channel” on the white interior detail to accommodate the wires as below.

The speaker wires in the cab can be seen below:

Completed unit and “spare parts!”

I have tried a wall wart putting out 17v but only get .01v at the engine. Can someone

throw some pointers my way.

I would like to keep the existing connection plug system between the loco and the tender if possible.

Can the motherboard in the tender be stripped of unnecessary Bachmann electronics such as EU required interferance suppression capacitors and coil? Then can the solder pads on the motherboard be mapped to the LocoFi unit standard color coded leads. If anyone has done this please lets start a cooperative dialogue to share and develop the idea. Unlike a diesel unit the steam tender has track power pickups on the trucks.

If you have added a commerical Keep Alive/Stay Alive in addition to the KA on the LocoFi receiver unit, can you share how this was wired into the tender circuitry

Can a working backup light on the tender be added and wired? I am making extensive modifications to the tender shell to make it resemble a Southern Pacific 90-R-7 oil bunker tender.

Should the motor used as a test load when I replace the fan load have a flywheel or some other resistance. My ESU DCC decoder test stand load motor has a flywheel.

The 2-2 Lever Nut kit works well except the levers are quite stiff and you need to ensure you have stripped enough bare wire on the leads which have to be pushed quite deep. I found it best to tin the lead wire so all the strands make full contact. The nut connectors are mounted with double sided tape. The base is made from various pieces of Evergreen sheet and shapes I had on hand.

I still need to set up the LED headlight/tail light to test those functions.

I am still using a 3 year old Amazon Fire tablet as the Android app platform. Not overwhelmed with the Amazon Fire tablet but now have an older Samsung S8 that is no longer my primary phone. I'll need to connect it to the 2.4 ghz house WiFi channel and move my primary phone to the 5 ghz channel.

I have noticed that I need to reacquire the locomotive Wifi connection on the Fire tablet after adding the new locomotive and the firmware update.

Also has any progress been made on the steam functions for the App? Now that I have the test stand I can test the 6 Chime SP steam whistle on a wav file I scraped from a video and edited. For now I will be using the Diesel control panel horn function as the whistle.

I am would like to control the LocoFi 3 directly from my cellphone, without the WiFi router.

My plan is to take the engine (with LocoFi 3) and the cellphone to our club which does not have a WiFi router. I am not sure of the procedure to accomplish this and cannot locate information on the LocoFi company website. Thank you for any assistance. Brian K