On SRman's Workbench

My latest project involved soldering some wires to a small 6-pin decoder to add a stay-alive circuit. By the time I got to that bit, after soldering all the other wires to the tantalum capcitors and the charging circuit (a LifeLink from YouChoos), my hands were getting quite shaky. It can be done!

This was an EFE London Transport silver train, some 1959/62 tube stock. I had originally installed the Black Beetle in a red 1938 car, but since Bachmann/EFE are producing a ready to run 1938 train, I swapped the chassis into a silver body. I repainted the seats to suit, but the EFE interiors use the same mouldings. The motor conversion was successful in itself, but the drag from those horrible EFE bogies needed something to be done: Metro Models to the rescue with some new bogie shells with pinpoint axles were added, using the EFE sideframes as overlays. These bogies come with some brass bar etchings that act as couplings, but they are still fiddly to connect, so I looked for an alternative and came up with using Kadee #5 coupling boxes in conjunction with Bachmann E-Z Mate whisker couplings with the dropper arms cut off. The boxes fit upside down over the coupling spigots on the bogies, and are secured with a spot of superglue.

Next was to modify the wiring of the Black Beetle to solder a harness with a 6-pin socket to the brushes and pickups, allowing me to experiment with different decoders. Initially I used a DCC Concepts decoder but wasn't happy with the running, so swapped that for a Zimo decoder. With advice from John at YouChoos, I added three tantalum 470uF capacitors to one of his LifeLink charging circuits, then soldered the wires from that to the pads on the Zimo MX617 decoder. I really didn't want to add any extra drag on the trailing bogies, which is why I have not fitted extra pickups on the one in the motorised car, and chose instead to use the keep-alive idea (the first time I have used this system).

I put together a very short video showing what I have done and the running unit in action.