Introduction to NSB Di5
Between 1985 and 1987 the NSB bought 17 DB V60 switching locomotives. The V60 (later 260) was a large serie of diesel hydraulic locomotivies and to this date some are still in use in Germany. The NSB renumbered them Di5.861-877. They remained in use until the mid to late 1990's. All are scrapped.
Di5.876 - Trondheim - July 8, 1994
Roco Di5.867
In 2003 Roco made another run of the Norwegian Di5 class
locomotive. The first run of this locomotive was made in the early
nineties. The first run has road number
Di5.867, the
second run has number Di5.876. The second (2003) run has a NEM/NMRA DCC connector, the first
run doesn't have any provision for installing a DCC decoder.
Lenz LE0521 under the cab insert
Hardwired to the printed circuit board
I installed a Lenz LE0521 in the first run which was quite a lot of
work. The decoder is placed between the metal frame and driver insert.
There is a small hole in the frame for the wires which are soldered
directly onto the printed circuit board.
Installing a decoder in the 2003 edition of this locomotive should be a lot easier.
Installation
The second run Roco Di5, this time the Di5.876. This is the model just out of the box, so all the hand rails etc are still to be mounted.
The 876 is the former DB 260 451-0 and was in service from November 1987 until june 1997. It was scrapped in Nov 1998.
After the shell is removed (take out two screws) we have access to
the NEM/NMRA connector. The small metal weight is can be removed to
give more room for a decoder.
When I removed the plug and plugged in a decoder I thought I was
done but unfortunately the first test drive resulted in a blown out
decoder. So their must be a short somewhere.
After measuring all the connector points I found that the yellow
function output had a connection to the red wire. The arrow in the
photo shows the place of the short. The solder point of the diode
is touching the copper strip that is used of the power pickup.
Some electrical tape will make sure that this short will never
happen again. The photos shows a small piece of tape placed over
the solder point on the board. I secured the tape with some CA
glue.
Now the decoder can be placed. I selected the Lenz LE1025 which is
decoder with excellent BEMF control which is very useful a
switching/shunting speeds.
Now the shell can be placed again and the locomotive is ready for
the program track. It was programmed with address 5876.
I did this install in 2004. In 2020 I installed a ESU Loksound decoder in this same model, see Di5 Loksound install.
Created: 2004-03-14. Update: 2020-05-03
