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.

The Boys are again let Loose

There is another problem to be solved, so the DeWALT Brothers and their friends have been called out to tackle the issue at hand.

The issue is yet again lack of storage - but in this instance accessible storage.  I have standardised on an 11 litre plastic box for storing a lot of my gear in. A great place to store them is on top of the adjustable shelving sets I have.  Since the ceiling it waaaay up there, I can get 7 boxes on top of each other and 8 side by side - 56 in total if my maths hasn't failed me. (my math will never fail me - I was beaten by the teacher to an inch of my life, well OK, he threw blackboard dusters at me - but they were wooden ones...) (mind you, the Nuns weren't much better!). So here is the space I will be working with after I moved the current contents to all over the garage in whatever spare space I had (very little in fact!)

But an issue is that the boxes also contain some gear I regularly want - can you see the problem?  Yep, I normally have to remove a pile of other boxes to get at the ones I want and this involves getting out the step ladder and such - oh the pain...(I can hear the old Dr Smith ...)

I worked out that the lower 3 boxes can be lifted down without the need of a ladder. So if the 4 boxes on top could be elsewhere, we'd be tickety boo (OK, I was watching an old Pommie TV series last night and some lingo rubbed off).  Hmmm, light bulb moment. What if there was a shelf in there just over 3 boxes high and all the lesser accessed boxes sat on top and all the regularly accessed boxes below?  I think I just heard the call of "Bingo!"

So here are just some of the temporarily displaced boxes jammed around the place - squeezy.

So I already had one sheet of 17mm film faced plywood and just needed one more sheet, so the other day it was off to a favourite place for us all - Bunnings. You know, a 2.4m x 0.6m sheet of ply sits inside of my Hyundai car?  Easy Peasy - no trailer or ropes needed.

A quick design drawn on a piece of scrap paper after measuring 10 times (don't you hate it when you only measure once and cock it up?) and I had a solution of a sheet of ply as the shelf with two "legs" of same material and one end being held by brackets to an existing shelf wall on the right hand side.

So the buzz saw was taken out and relevent measurements transcribed to the wood and the noise began, as did a crap load of saw dust.  Then the DeWALT boys came along and put some holes and then long screws into place along with their friend Mr Aquadhere.

Then I lugged the solution into the Paint Shed for a coat of 4in1 Prep undercoat and then left it overnight in the warmth of the drying shed.

I figured I'd move it into position and then give it a top coat of paint in situ.

So this morning I thought I'd work up a sweat after a lousy sleepless night and try and get the juices going in this bod of mine (you beast you...)  So a few screws were added. Some to add a couple of brackets to the right hand side and then a few from under the "floor" of the shelf, the top of the storage sheves themselves.  This way it can't fall on me if I grab the shelves and tug on them (why I'd do that I dont know, but safe is best)

Well that didnt really get any sweat flowing, but this did - move the boxes back into position! Close enough to 40 boxes got shifted and yep, sweat was dripping from this one.

Now I can more easily access the lower three boxes along the storage area, which I made sure all contained only regularly accessed stuff and the not so regular stuff is on the new shelve above. 

Now for a coffee and some tucker for lunch I think, then a relax for a bit.

Look Me in the Eyes

So I'm doing a pile of maintenance on my N scale locos at the moment and a big bug bear is that when doing the coupler trip pin height, it is damned hard to see accurately their height above or below the track when you have to bend down to table height or awkwardly pick them up with a small piece of track. So...

It was time to make something. But it can't take up all of my benchspace even though it would need a good footing so as to not fall over when being used.  So out with some power tools and such and the attack of the 6 mm plywood began.  The design mutated as it went along, as they always do.  But simple should do the trick here.

So I made the shelf 42 cm wide, 42 cm high and 20 cm deep.  Pretty stable enough on its feet and light and can be put away over the top of a lot of other stuff in my storage racks when not in use.  I just used my little plunge saw and cut up the bits of ply from a small sheet I already had on hand in the shed.

I then sanded the edges and sides to remove all the daggy bits and got to gluing it together.  My old scuba diving lead weights do come in handy for holding things down.

I used some 12 mm triangle strip to bolster the joins and again used the lead to hold them down until the glue dried, thereby giving a good solid join.

Once the white glue had dried for a day, I took it outside for a good orbital sanding.

Then it was inside for a good lick of water based One Coat Clear to give it a reasonable look.  Even though it really doesn't need a coat of paint, it makes it look better to me.

Came up pretty good in fact. Should look good in amongst the stuff on my work benches.

Now, the job isn't finished yet.  I need some track to put the locos on so I can see the coupler trip pins.  I was originally going to just glue them onto the shelf I just made, but nah....

I'll make a seperate piece for the track so that the shelf itself might get to be used for other things in time.  So another piece of 6 mm ply was cut to the size of the top of the shelf - 20 cm x 42 cm.  Anyone know the number 42?

So I glued down a length of HO dual gauge track to cater for my HO and HOn3½ locos and wagons and then a piece of 9 mm track for the N scale locos and wagons.

And just so it looks better finished, I added some dirt and grass scatters.  I will ballast the track shortly as well and maybe some spots of static grass and such - what the hey :-)

So here it is in place actually being used.  My eyeballs can eyeball the coupler trip pins at a nice comfortable height.  The bench is stable and I made sure it is also wide enough that should a loco decide to go to sleep and fall off the track after being knocked by a clumsy hand, it will just lie down in the grass.

OK, now those trip pins on the couplers are now good to go :-)