Locomotives
The Farish class 60 is a nicely running loco and usually operates the oil train. Because it runs regularly it is a good candidate to have a sound decoder.
The Youchoos installation guide is for a newer version of the chassis than mine, so I decided to get an MX660 decoder and follow the installation guide for the Class 57 (Guide). The steps are identical, but there is a bit more room in the Class 60!
Raw material required:
- MX660 decoder with sound file;
- Sugarcurve 6 speaker
- Lifelink PCB with 2 flat 470uF tantalum capacitors
As a hint, mark the "forward" direction of your chassis before starting. If the decoder is mounted with its "forward" direction the same as the loco, the LED settings will be easier.
I followed the steps in the guide pretty much exactly. There is more space for the speaker, and it was only necessary to file the sides away from the area above the front bogie. The chassis thickness for the bogie "+" mounting is unchanged. The decoder was attached with double sided tape on top of kapton tape. The capacitors were mounted at the back of the chassis with the lifelink just forward.
I had some 6BA solder tags; the screw that used to hold the PCB tot he lugs on the top of the chassis fitted through the solder tag in the holes where normally you'd solder wire. They made a simple pair of chassis connections.
The lighting is worth recording. There are 5 solder pads on the front & rear lighting boards marked A-E. Be aware that the boards are different widths, so they are "ended". The WHITE LED is connected between A(+ve) & C. The RED LED is connected between D(+ve) & E. So wire a blue decoder wire to A, with a wire link to D; then yellow and white wires to E & C respectively. At the front: white goes to F0f, yellow to F01. At the rear: white goes to F0r, yellow to F03. Then program CV33 to 17, CV34 to 6 and the LEDs will operate as expected.
The Farish "Castle" class steam locomotives are designed for sound installation. I (inadvertently) have two "Castles"; this one has been renumbered 5011, "Tintagel Castle".
I have sound decoders from Youchoos; they come with the sound files already loaded. Their guide for this install YouChoos N Scale Castle is simple and complete.
In this model, all the decoder and sound installation is in the tender. There is a space for a 15x11mm speaker; Youchoos supply one with a self-adhesive gasket.
The decoder is a Zimo MS581 which has built-in "keepalive" capacitors. It is a Next18 decoder, with a simple plug onto the Farish-supplied PCB - so why you have to remove the PCB in the tender first to solder the speaker wires to the underside is anyone's guess but never mind!
Once in the loco number is set in the conventional manner, and the loco is ready to go. It has good reliable pickup from all axles. The sounds really do bring life to the railway. My ambition is that "human" train drivers will drive steam excursion trains round the railway, with other traffic running under computer control in the background; the ability to whistle should add some entertainment!
My other Castle has an older MX658 decoder, but the process was identical. The MX series seems to have been superceded by the MS series; the MS581 is near identical in size to the older MX658.
I added a couple of sound decoders a while ago, and have been very impressed with how the bring the railway to life. I decided to add a diesel one and picked the Class 57.
Youchoos has a guide to installing a Zimo MX660 in the Farish class 57. Link here.: YouChoos
The guide calls for total chassis stripdown, then removing metal to make room for the speaker. I chose to file the chassis rather than grind, and it only took a few minutes. Then add decoders wires to the motor, and stick the decoder onto the top of the chassis (kapton tape then double sided tape). Very quickly I had the chassis running, with sound.
For lighting: my decoder is back to front in the chassis (I have the fan as "front") so the F0 headlamp outputs are OK for the tail lights. I've configured function output 1 as the rear headlight, and function output 3 as the front headlight. To enable these program CV33=17, and CV34=6.
Great result; I suspect I will be wanting more of these!
Finally found a solution for Annie and Clarabel. I've simply cut the running gear from the bottom of the models, and glued a chassis from a Peco 15' wagon kit underneath. It needed approx 1mm spacing so a suitable piece of PVC sheet was added too.
The wheels are not far to small in comparison, but their axles are properly detected!
I've fixed the Bachmann "Voyager" today: so we now have a near completely working set of locos.
The fault was: as soon as it started to move, the track power was shorted and the PM42 isolated the track section. I'd removed the power car, replaced the DCC decoder with the original "DC" plug, then powered it from a 12v supply. The motor ran slowly, but took 2A. After a while it sun up to full speed and only took 150mA, and all was well for a month; then it did it again.
This time I removed the bogies to eliminate a mechanical load as the cause. Still it took 2A. I stripped down the chassis and removed the motor completely. It still took 2A, then spun up to full speed again - so definitely the problem was in the motor.
BR Lines were able to supply me a new motor, but then everything went wrong....
The new motor was 1mm shorter than the last one; that meand that one of the drive shafts didn't mate with the motor and a bogie wasn't driven. It looks like the flywheel has been pressed too far onto the axle. No problem - the plastic insert could be pulled out 1mm so the drive shaft could still be driven.
The old motor had a piece of foam around half of it. The purpose of that foam is to make sure the PCB can't short to the motor body. Unfortunately I didn't note which side of the motor it was on, and assembled the model with the motor upside down. Result - loco runs forward, with red light lit; white light for reverse.
I was able to use 12V DC with little wires to contact the motor and test it. After installing the PCB I did the same test, and the motor appeared to run OK.
The phosphor bronze strips that contact the motor from the PCB were slightly bent, and could short to the chassis. So when it was all re-assembled the forward/reverse LEDs worked OK but the motor wouldn't run. I believe it had a motor shorted to the rails. I assumed the problem was the previous short having caused the decoder to fail, so I fetched another.... similar result, this time with a burn mark on the decoder's heat shrink.
The ESU decoder tester was invaluable at this point: essentially a "known good loco" into which you plug any decoder. Unfortunately they hadn't marked pin 1 (they'd helpfully written "yellow" on what turns out to be pin 6). After resolving that the new, cheap decoder was definitely failed in one direction (it still ran in the other) but the Digitrax one was OK. Clearly the Digitrax ones are more tolerant of operator abuse.
Finally, with the motor contacts clear of the chassis and a good decoder in place, I was able to get the loco back on the track. That took an hour and a half, to do a 10 minute job!
Lessons: there's value in things like decoder testers; but getting the basics right is fundamental.