Geep Geep

You just gotta love those old 4 axle EMD GP38-2 locos.  The GP38-2 was an upgraded version of the earlier GP38 and they had power provided by an EMD 645E 16-cylinder donk, which generated 2,000 horses under the bonnet.  They are my next favourite after the 6 axle EMD SD40-2 locomotive (3,000 horses - now whilst reading that bit, imagine Tim the Toolman grunting...).

So I happen to have three of the N scale Walthers GP38-2 locos.  These were based on the Life-Like model, so are a pretty old design.  But they are good runners and it was time for them to coming into this century and get DCC decoders installed.  The mechanism is easy enough to work with to convert from DC to DCC.

I happen to have from previous purchases, some of the Digitrax DN163A0 decoders on hand. They don't quite fit the loco, but with a minor modification they will fit - involves a hacksaw !

So, by adding another slot for the DCC Decoder board to slot into, it will all fit. So the hacksaw got to come out and play. The slot only needed to be 4-5 mm deep so it didn't reduce the strength or weight of the loco body.

There, the cut is done. I then tidied it up with a small file to remove the dags around the edges.  You can see my cut on the left, replacing the manufacturers slot just to its right, which wasn't going to do the trick for the decoder I have on hand.

Testing the decoder fit - it lines up OK.

And it is a nice snug fit, so the electrical conductivity is good.

Next I soldered on some wires to the motor and fed them up through the body.  Of course before I did this I lubricated all the gears and bearing points with my seleection of oils and greases.

Then the soldering iron got used again to solder these two wires onto the DCC Decoder - in the correct location of course.  OK, OK, so I got them swapped around and had to swap them over after I tested it - we all make mistakes!

The shell was then placed back on the loco and a full programming of settings using JMRI software was performed and the loco then tested fine.  After I do the next two GP38-2 locos, I will compare them all and make sure they are tweaked prepoerly so as to all run at the same speeds.

A Canuck E8A is Given Voice

I have previously managed to get sound into one loco in each consist of the different loco sets I have.  So the N scale F3 Santa Fe, F7 Santa Fe and PA sets, both Rio Grande and Southern Pacific, all have one loco in their consists that makes noise.  So now it is time that my E8 set gets theirs. The other set without a voice is the F7 Great Northern, which will gets their's after I finish with my VIA Rail set.

I have a pair of Kato made E8A locos in VIA Rail colours to haul my Canadian Passenger train around.  So now it's time for the Locos to be able to sing while running.  VIA 1800, the lead locomotive will become the voice for the pair.  I got my hands on a Digitrax SDN144K0a Sound Decoder and an ESU 50321 Sugar Cube Speaker - that should do the job for me.

So first up it's off with it's head, I mean body.  That way we can remove the original Digitrax DN163K0a non-sound decoder I put in her a bunch of years back. Even though you can just fold the motor tabs over the decoder board and use the supplied plastic clip to hold it all together, I always solder in my decoders for much more reliable running.  So the soldering iron was fired up to desolder the old decoder.

So here is the Digitrax sound decoder. You can see it comes with a bog standard coil speaker and a small capacitor hanging off of it.  The capacitor must remain, but the speaker can be played with.

Here is a comparison of the old non-sound decoder (bottom) and the new sound decoder (top).  We can see that one of the LED lights will need to go, as an E8A only has a headlight.  So the soldering iron has another job to do.

Since the patient is already on the table, a full grease and oil change also will be performed. The contact strips will also get a polish for good conductivity as well.  So a full strip down is performed.

So this is the orientation I think I will install the capacitor and speaker.

Now a decision is needed.  Do I go with the supplied Coil speaker or go for a Sugar Cube speaker?  The Alco PA locos I voiced up a while back were used to trial both.  We have the sugar cube type on the left in the Rio Grande loco and the original coil type on the right installed ni the Southern Pacific loco.

Here is the coil speaker setup I used in the PA loco.  I made up a boom box out of styrene to give a better sound.

And here we see the contents of an ESU 50321 sugar cube kit.  You build the boom box to the size you want.

OK, yep, I'll go the sugar cube this time.  They are just a better speaker all round.  So out with my Plasti-Zap CA to glue it together.  I went with the thick spacer and bottom and was left with a thin spacer and double bottom for other jobs.

No one said a job didn't get done without a bit of hard work.  So out with the hacksaw and into the main loco frame!

After a few minutes of careful cutting, I got the piece I wanted gone, out.  I weighed the filings and the chunk of metal and the loco is now 10½ grams lighter now.  This won't affect the overall pulling power of the consist, as a single loco can pretty much pull the passenger train by itself.  But of course two locos are better looking.

Now you've probably been asking yourself why, why did he cut a chunk out of the rear of the loco.  Well, it is so I have somewhere to mount the speaker and capacitor.

As mentioned ealier, I did a full maintenance on the loco as part of this job and now I could start assembling the loco - yellow gear grease shows up well - doesn't it.

So now I got the decoder out and the sugar cube speaker.  I had to cut the wires to the capacitor and extend them so the cap could reach it's mounting location.  The coil speaker also was desoldered from the wires so that the sugar cube speaker could take its place.

So after a few test positionings, the wires were soldered, heat shrink tubing put in place and the decoder itself soldered into place.

Then out with some double sided tape to hold the capacitor and speaker into position.

Then a few bends of the wiring so that it all sits inside the frame and is ready for the shell to come down.

A last check that all is in position and correct.

The loco shell was then put in place and she was ready to be programmed up on my JMRI rig and gotten ready for a run down at the club :-)

Programming and then track testing proved all was good and VIA Rail 1800 now could speak for herself.

So maybe next week I will tackle the Great Northern F7. So toot toot for now.