JNR DD54 Diesel Hydraulic

[jjb1970]

The JNR DD54 diesel hydraulic was a dreadful locomotive, a Maybach engine with hydraulic transmission and with NBL-esque quality and reliability. They had a very short life, yet despite that I have a soft spot for them as I like the design and the B-1-B wheel arrangement is interesting. Their calamitous record can't be blamed on Japan not knowing how to manage hydraulics or them being the poor relation in a railway dominated by diesel electric types as Japan built some excellent diesel hydraulic types which had long and successful lives such as the DE10 and DD51 (another two types with interesting wheel arrangements, but much more successful than the DD54). Zoukei Mura made a superb HO - 1/80 model which is still pretty easy to find. Anyway, I stumbled across this nice video on YT:

 

[britishcolumbian]

I do like the DD54 for its aesthetics, but that's it. No desire to buy one... instead holding out faint hope someone will do a DE10 0 series in N...

[EddieB]

From what I can tell, they were built between 1966 and 1971, but all were withdrawn 1977-1978.  It does make one wonder why construction continued over that length of time, when their shortcomings must have become apparent by then.   One survives - DD54-33 (Mitsubishi 1769/1971) at the museum in Kyoto.  Withdrawn in December 1978, it appears to have been added to the present collection in 1984.  Unfortunately as displayed the unusual wheel arrangement is mostly hidden.

 

My photo from August 2023.

 

 

 

[jjb1970]

Japanese people are normally very measured and express dissatisfaction with faint praise but opinions (a typical example is that if they think an idea if dreadful they'll often call it interesting) on these locomotives seem to have been blunt and scathing. Nice looking though, well at least I think so. Something I find amusing is that if you look for the Zoukei Mura model, most second hand examples are in 'as new' condition, i.e. without the huge number of add on parts fitted. The same is true if you look at Tomix standard range 1/80 locomotives. Clearly it isn't just British modellers that hate fitting a mountain of detail parts.