Dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot

 Oh... Bugger It !

I was using my NCE Pro Cab Radio handset last night to drive my trains around the AMRA layout and the throttle wheel suddenly got gritty and jammed - damn.  I was able to continue running my trains as the throttle has buttons for faster and slower etc - no biggy.  When I got home I placed it on the workbench to be looked at at a later time, in due course, when the time was right...

So after working on the club layout today I decided to check out my Radio Throttle - I had an idea a mate hinted as a possibile solution perhaps.

Upon taking out the multitude of screws holding the NCE Pro Cab Radio together, I took out the batteries and had a gander at it all.  Yep, that was it.... Whilst the batteries are in the cab, there is a fair bit of pressure on the plastic battery holder ends.  Looks like age finally had its way and the plastic gave way and it finally broke at one end, thereby pushing the metal clips at that end into the throttle speed wheel.

Now that thought that my friend at the club, let's call him B1, and I had, was that the radio cab throttle and the normal Powercab throttle I also have, should both have the exact same plastic cases. So I should be able to do a swap as the Powercab throttle does not need a functioning battery case as it gets its power directly from the layout and DCC bus. So it was out with my NCE Power Pro Cab and it also got plonked onto the workbench and pulled apart. The bench is now starting to look like an electronics repair station.

So a closer look at the back case from the Power Pro Cab showed that I needed to drill a couple of holes in it to allow the aerial to connect in as well as the status LED Light to be visible.

So it was time, time to get out the POWER TOOLS ! (I swear I could hear Tim the Toolman in the background...)  The De Walt drill got a run today.

The only soldering I needed to do was to get the wires off of the battery terminal connectors and put them back later. So here is the before unsoldering pic so I could tell which wire went where. Nothing like a bit of documentation before you go at it and muck it all up - experience...

So I now inserted the set of battery connectors into the top of the new back of the Radio Cab.  Here is a behind the cab look and then inside the cab look.

With the holes drilled in the top of the case, I installed the radio components for the aerial and LED.

Soldering of the battery wires was now done after inserting the battery terminals at the bottom of the case.  Pics of inside and outside of the case.

Done, so I says to myself - I talk to myself you know - only one smart enough around here to talk to... well... only one around actually !

But, I says to myself, I better test it heh?!  So I grabbed a small N scale locomotive, connected the Power Pro Cab to drive the test layout and then connected in the Radio Base Station, THEN turned on the Radio Cab.  Yep, all good - yeeeeharrrrr - happy chappy and ready to go for the next train outing next week :-)