Jack's birthday is on Wednesday this week and today a parcel arrived from the US. This parcel contained two sound decoders and two speakers. One is for his Bachmann Alco S4 and the other for his Bachmann GP40. After viewing these sounds on youtube, Jack agreed that it would make for a great birthday present. Now all I need to do is install these into the two locos. The speaker on the lower left of the pic is only 13mm in diameter and is for the S4, which has limited space inside. I wonder where Bachmann place their own speaker... Both decoders and speakers were purchased from Jim's Model Trains in Pennsylvania... Funny really as Jack's layout has a definite PRR feel about it ! I must say that they came well packed and delivered in two weeks. Not bad at all... Usual disclaimer : no connection to retailer, just a happy customer and will probably use again in the future. Now I'd better install them before Wednesday, or better still, wire his layout for dcc... Cheers, Gary.
Being Jack's birthday today, all he wanted to do was stay home, not go out or do anything exciting. Atleast this has given me time to install sound into his locomotives. Here I go through the steps of fitting sound to his GP40 first. Body pulled off the chassis and the decoder and speaker to be installed. The area below the motor is where a speaker can be sited. I am using a TCS WOW 20mm diameter 8 Ohm speaker for this loco. I needed something that had a smaller diameter than the speaker so I could gauge the size/space for drilling holes in the fuel tank, without going overboard. A Lego disc with another piece as a handle is perfect. The bottom of the fuel tank was measured and marked to find the centre, directly below the aperture in the chassis. I then centred the Lego tool and used the corners of the red block to align with the scribed cross. The scribing complete. Now to drill several holes within the circle. After a clean up with a little sand paper, the fuel tank is ready for the speaker. This shows the comparison of both the speaker and the drilled speaker location. The white handle and ring on the speaker is sticky-back adhesive. Now to locate the decoder atop of the other electrical gubbins. A piece of electrical tap is there holding the decoder in place whilst locating the wiring. You can see the speaker plug (white plug with red/black wires protruding) secured to the decoder. The wires snake down between the decoder and other electrics and then through a gap and a small hole down past the motor and out the bottom. The chassis is a very tight fit against the body, hence running the wires through the motor cavity. Very little wire is exposed below the chassis, although just enough to be able to solder the speaker and have a little to assist in locating the speaker in the fuel tank above the drilled holes. All soldered up and ready for some blu-tak to help hold the speaker firmly in place. All wiring complete, the deocoder plugged into the socket and the fuel tank back in place. Ready to be tested... For some reason I can't upload a video demonstrating the sounds of the decoder onto you tube, so I have uploaded a short video on our Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/PLATFORM1MRC/ Apologies to those not on Facebook... Cheers, Gary.
Jack's Alco S4 has now been fitted with sound. I thought to myself when fitting this loco that the Bachmann Class 08 had very little room... Fitting this loco with the decoder is really shoe-horning it in, being damn careful not to pinch any wires... :evil: As can be seen below, it isn't a very large loco and there is very little space under that long hood. The decoder is exactly the same width as the inside of the hood... only if the decoder was 1mm narrower... There is limited space for the decoder. The decoder basically sits hard up against the socket at one end and the wiring loom sits up hard against the cab end headlight tower. The tape holding the decoder in place virtually squeezes into the body. If tape could scream, this would ! I located the speaker at the No.2 end of the shunter, right under the slotted exhaust vents that are on the body. I used a piece of electrical tape to insulate the electrics underneath, then a small amount of blue tac to hold the MRC 13mm diameter speaker in place. This speaker comes with a plug already attached. The decoder comes with a length of speaker wire with a plug, standard, so that you can fit your speaker of choice. Originally, I had the speaker blu-tac'd onto the bogie tower (arrowed below), but when I tested it, the sound was lost within the cab. You could say it sounded a little, no, a lot muffled. Where it is located now allows plenty of sound to escape from inside the body shell. So, there we go. Hopefully I won't have to open this loco too often due to the very tight fitment of the decoder. When I did open it to relocate the speaker, the tape pulled up with the decoder attached. Luckily no wires were damaged. Phew ! Cheers, Gary.
