Socialism for PA's

Nope, not politics and also not about Personal Assistants - it's about some of my ALCO PA-1 and PB-1 locomotives.

Wayyyy back I put sound in some of my PA's.  I use the MRC first generation sound decoders as there wasn't much else around.  They did the job, but were fairly quiet, so I got a few decoders and only put them in my EMD F7 locos and a couple of my PA's.  As you can see in the previous post, I have found that the Sugar Cube speakers make a damned big difference to the volume of sound and all is new again and BETTER.

So I am spreading the joy around and distributing the sound decoders amongst the F3's and other PA's as well.  So the F7's had 2 sound decoders amongst the 4 loco consist and now only has 1 as that is enough to make it heard across the room nicely.  The second sound decoder got whacked across into my 4 loco consist of F3's.  Both sets are now top notch in the volume and sound department :-)

So the PA's got some attention today and I moved decoders around so that all consists have sound. The Southern Pacific PA/PB/PA set had 2 sound decoders and now only needs one, with the spare going to the D&RGW PA/PB set which previously had no sound before. Here are the leaders of both consists:

Now today I did not do the Sugar Cube installs, just moved the decoders around and lubricated the locos ready for the upcoming train show in two weeks time.  So What was maybe in a PA is now in a PB and some shells got swapped to make it easier.  It was all a big shell game and hide and seek I can tell you.  In the end I now have sound across the consists of F3's F7's and PA's.

A before shot of the lead PA and the PB before I mucked with them.

So for this PA/PB pair, I just left the decoders in place as the locomotive's mechanism is the same for both, and just moved the shell across between the two.  The front bogie had to also move as the lead loco does not have a coupler on the bogie and of course the B unit does.

The headlight had to also move as the PB doesn't have a light and the PA needs one.  Easy to do with the soldering iron to move the LED from one decoder to the next.

So after the game of whack-a-mole, hide and seek and such, we had the 3 PA/PB unit in Southern Pacific colours done.  The sugar cubes can come another day, but at least no moving of decoders will be needed.

Now for the D&RGW pair of PA/PB's.  I was able to make it so that the sound decoder went in the PA for now.  When I do the Sugar Cube install I will prbably machine off 4-5 mm of metal where the little speaker currently is.

So as of today we have distributed the wealth of sound amongst a bunch of locomotives.