It's been a while since I last posted.

The Kanto region has been experiencing scorching heat for days, making it difficult to work in my model room, which has no air conditioning. And since we haven't had any new trains recently, I've been running out of ideas.

The heatwaves continue, but I finally managed to get myself to work on a model train for the first time in a while. I'm renovating a KATO 383 series motor car that I've had for a while, and converting it to a slotless motor, which is what's popular these days.

The purpose of this replacement is to deal with the loud motor noise, which is sometimes present in our KATO trains, so this is the first time we've replaced a slot motor in an existing train.

The parts used are the Moha 383-109 Shinano motor car.

Not only the motor, but also the underfloor parts and couplers are replaced as a whole.

The motor bogie is removed from the original underfloor and transplanted to the new motor car.

All that's left to do is reassemble the body and underfloor parts.

During a test run on the workbench/test driving platform, I confirmed that it worked without any problems.

Normally, I would have done a test run with the full formation in an endless tatami room, but I couldn't stand the heat in the room, so I replaced the motor in Moha 383 and completed the work.

I'm hoping to do a test run with the full formation this coming weekend.

And then there's this set, which I bought for 10,000 yen, as the subject of the article.

I bought it at some Pochi Fes (Hobbyland Pochi's model festival), and although it's second-hand, I feel nostalgic for the time when I could buy it for this price, and the price of the motor parts is relatively high.

This 383 series has had its motor renewed, but there is actually one more thing that concerns me, so I will replace that part and the renewal will be complete. However, I will introduce the replacement work and the test run with the new motor in another article.