Took Longer Than I Thought It Would

While sorting through a few locos last week I spotted a few more steamers.  This one in particular grabbed my attention - she's old, but good - one of the Con-Cor S2 class steam locos. She's a 4-8-4 in Great Northern colours.  Somehow she ended up in the back of a box and I had forgetten all about her.  She is a very, good runner and is a very good model, but she probably hasn't had an outing for many years - manufactured in 2000 I think - DC of course.  So she got a wheel clean and some DC running last week and is OK.  So it was now time to DCC her - in fact she is definitely worth having a voice - so a sound decoder was needed.

So the lid came off the tender, to find an 8 pin socket already in place - yippie !  This should be an easy and fast install I reckon!

I just didn't hear the devil just around the corner snickering "MWAAHAAHAA....", did I....

I chose to use an ESU 58823 which is a LokSound 5 DCC Micro with wires hanging out.  It is 21mm x 10 mm and about 3 mm high.

Of course I used a sugarcube type speaker for the noise output side of the installation. Luckily I had just received a few more into my own stock as they are always my go to unit - the ESU 50321, which comes with a baffle kit as well as the speaker.  So out with the ZAP Plastic super glue.

I selected to build the medium baffle size, as I find that gives a really good sound for N scale size locos, and still fits in most installations.

The completed speaker was now put aside for a bit to dry up, as the super glue takes a few minutes.

Now to make room in the tender for the installation of decoder and speaker. As you can see on the left side of the pic, there are two coils and a small surface mounted capacitor on the DC board. - off with their heads I said !

So the coils and capacitor were desoldered from the board as I would no longer need them.

Now to play around with the bits and see what is the best way to fit it all in.  I reckon the speaker can be double sided taped to the roof of the front of the tender and the decoder behind it, should work - measurements were tight, but the eyeballing seemed to confirm it.  (I never did hear the increased snickering from around the corner...)

So first to test the decoder and install the relevant sound file for the loco.  So I got out my ESU Test board and attached the decoder to it.  Then I hooked it up to the PC and fired up the ESU Programmer software.  I ended up selecting the ESU S0737 sound project as there was no "S2" file available.  The GS-4 sounds good enough for me :-)

Once the sound was installed and the decoder tested out all OK, I needed to solder the decoder to an 8 pin plug.  I already had stock of them, so I dug one out and soldered the correct coloured wires to the correct pins.

From the internet of all things, here are the colours and their positions:

I did have to bridge the PCB tracks down where the old coils used to live, so that was done, then the decoder plugged in.

So the decoder and speaker were just loosely positioned so I could try putting the top of the tender on.  Now I think I vaguely heard some loud mean and nasty laughter... I just thought it was the dog next door.

Yeh, right, well, that didn't go well, now did it....  The top was just thisssss close to fitting.  But I figured a hammer was not the answer. So "out", I said - "OUT !"  And the decoder, speaker and even the PCB were out.

Now to play around a bit and see what will fit.  I found the speaker definitely would fit now, even with my normal double sided tape to hold it to the roof of the tender.  And with the old PCB gone as well, the decoder would fit and not hinder the lid closing.  Only thing is, that without the PCB, I would have to solder the wires to where they needed to go - not hard though.

So some wires got soldered and heat shrink applied to protect the joins.  Excess wires were nipped off, leaving enough wire for any future changes if needed.

Then I had to tame the wires. As you can see, they are a tad messy.  But I managed it and then got the lid back on.

Then of course onto the test track and make some changes to the settings via the use of JMRI software. Like speed tables, selecting the correct bell and whistle types, volume of various things - and just things.

Now she's ready for a run down at the club and I reckon she can pull the Great Northern's "Empire Builder" passenger train.  She might have taken three days to do, but those extra two days are worth it.