Yep, Thought it might Eventually

Yeh, well, a little while back I upgraded the speaker in my HO scale Walthers GP15 loco from an old normal speaker to a modern Sugar Cube type.  It was a success and she sure did sound good after that.  I did note to myself that the 4 axle loco might in future need an upgrade to a Stay Alive because of her short length.

After having another run on the club layout at Zillmere on Friday night, she had the stutters again - the loco would stall out on some points and dodgy track areas. One of the bogies was also having pickup issues in itself too. So yesterday, after my morning coffee, I pulled her apart and checked her out. 

First thing was to make myself a note to solder all the wires to the decoder board as those press fit connections are never the greatest.  I also made a note, that while I was at it, why not go full hog - add a Stay Alive. You can see the little black press fit caps at the left and right hand ends of the decoder as well as in the middle.  They do have a tendancy sometimes to get loose and then the wires make bad electrical contact.  You can also see that the speaker is about half in and half out of the grey mounting box.

First up I pushed the speaker further up so as to free up as much space in the grey box above the rear bogie.  A bit of thick super glue helped keep it there too.

Next I got out some 2.7 volt, 1 farad Super Capacitors and measured them for fit in the grey box - perfect it was, so onwards with the job I said to myself.

Laying them side by side with a small drop of superglue to hold them in place, I then soldered the 4 of them in series to make my "battery". I also got my handy Stay Alive diagram out for reference to make sure I didn't stuff it up.

Now I had some research to do as the Sound Decoder in the loco is an OEM version of a SoundTraxx Econami.  Hours of looking and nothing specific was found.  But of course Marcus Ammann’s website, http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/nswmn/index.htm, was of course extremely helpful and I was able to ascertain one way or another where I should connect the Stay Alive. It was of course AFTER the 4 rectifier diodes that turn the DCC power into DC power for the decoder. 

So the 4 power diodes are along the left side of the decoder board in the photo. I ended up soldering my wires to the top 2 diodes on the right hand side of each of course. Oh, and YES, Scooter, I did test it first with a multi-meter before soldering.  I had chosen wisely and was in the correct place.

It was now time to start assembling the loco and building the Stay Alive into it.

So with the super capacitor block now under the grey box and held in place with a bit of double sided tape, I drilled a few small holes to hold the legs of the components I was using.  Since I had the space, I left them in the air for a bit of extra cooling.  Might not look crash hot, but it will do the job and will last the distance.

The left hand component is the Zener Diode, the middle one is a Resistor and the right hand component is the Diode.  The resistor gets pretty hot initially when the Super Capacitor needs to charge up, as does the Zener Diode.  Once in running mode it all settles down and is not a problem at all.

Next I soldered on some small plugs so that things can be disconnected if required at a later date.  I added one to the decoder to attach to the stay alive and one to the front headlight so that the loco shell can easily be placed elsewhere when working on the loco in the future.

Some Kapton Tape was then used to hold the wires neatly so the shell can be put on easily.

Some testing was then of course performed and all was good - ready to run at Mr Kennedy's tomorrow morning in fact :-)  I think I earned my Bundy/Coke this arvo.

The N'ers are Busy Building Down at the Club

The N scalers are really busy working on the top deck of their layout down at the RMCQ club.

The wharf and water scenes are really coming along fast with a large contingent of workers at it a couple of days a week. Even some HO'ers have jumped in to get experience and to lend their experience. Enough gasbagging, here's some photos from the other day:

Below, we see the long dock area for small craft like fishing boats. There is a boat builder/repairing at the right hand end.

Below we can see it is going to get busy and the detail is coming along great. Running trains into the area will sure be fun.

Below we see the boat builder/repairer scene.  You have to have one of these around a wharf area don't you :-)

Next we have the main large wharf that juts out into the bay with its scratch built warehouses (yep, all bits scratch built).  A coastal freighter will be glued down once the wharf detail is complete.

The water is done with tissue paper and glue shaped, then paint, then the gloss medium and the like on top.

The other side of the main wharf showing another freighter and the river bank which is getting lots of little scenes on it as well.

A Dive into the Too Hard Basket

OK, so here's the story bit first - a number of years back, crickey, it's actually five years ago this all started !

I bought myself a birthday present of a pair of HO scale Broadway Limited manufactured EMD SW1500 locomotives in that beautiful yellow and green livery of Missouri-Kansis-Texas Railroad.  I made sure to get them with DCC decoder and sound installed too - they sure did look purdy :-)

Number 54 was perfect out of the box. Number 50 ran for a bit then went kaboom. It had ceased to be, it was bereft of life, it now rested in peace. It just stopped and made that burnt electronics smell. So I eventually (yeh, well, a few months later) opened her up and found that the sound decoder had kicked the bucket and fallen off its perch.  I tested the motor and it spun OK, or so I thought...

Anyway, an email to the manufacturer and they said if I was happy to install a new decoder they'd shoot one out under warranty. When it arrived I was a tad busy with work and it took 6-7 months for me to get around to doing the replacement.  But I did eventually get around to it and pulled her down into parts and replaced the smelly old decoder with a brand new one that even smelled nice and new :-)

Onto the test track she went and... and... and...  nothing. I prodded her and nothing. I pushed her and nothing. It was totally ignoring me. So a full pull down again and out with the multi-meter to measure it all and volts was going in and nothing was going out. That's when I noticed a new and fresh brown mark on the loco's grey internal plastic - dang!  I had blown another sound decoder!  ARRRGGGHHHHH.

I tested the motor and it spun OK, so I thought it was OK....  You get where this is going ?  Anyway. I put it in the too hard basket as I was busy at work and the 12 months had expired since I had purchased it - so no warranry left.

So for my birthday this year a month and a bit back, I decided to get the loco running, as I now have plenty of time on my hands. So I stripped it all down and got some multi-meters out and connected them up to a DC power supply and set about measuring for volts and amps and stuff all over the loco.  Well blow me down if the motor spun fine and freely with no binding ! But here's the rub - the damn thing was drawing 2½ amps under no load !!!  So that turned out to be the cause of both blown sound decoders.

So, what the hell, I emailed the manufacturer to see if they had spare motors available - and yep - sure do. AND I thought why bother just putting in a non-sound decoder which I have kicking around the place - go the full hog I said to myself (I do that - talk to myself - but I don't always get the answer I want - I'm cantankerous that way). So I asked if they still had sound decoders for sale - yep, they sure do.  So a motor and sound decoder were ordered, paid for (95 Yanky bucks - not bad actually) and shipped to me. They arrived last Friday.

So today I found the too hard basket (one of many) and set all the parts out and stripped it all down.  Here's this particular too hard basket.

Now here are a couple of shots of the new donk and sound decoder.

I tested the new power unit and found that it runs at no load with only 0.02 to 0.08 amps current draw - BIG difference to the dud motor I had.  Now, first of course I went and lubed up all the gears and shafts with the relevant ultra-light oil, light oil, heavy oil and grease. Next it was time to install the new donk - not quite the original 12 cylinder as per the real loco, but a sufficiently strong enough electric one for my needs on this model.

Shafts were installed and the motor block fixed into place.

Next a test fit of the new sound decoder to make sure all fitted OK.

I had to open up the other of these two locos to compare with it what I was working on to make sure I was getting it right - I was :-)

A tidy up of all the wires and some kapton tape to hold them in place.

Complete!  Job done :-)  Well, of course I did also put it on the programming track and test it all and then run it a bit and compare it to the other one - all good as gold.  I am happy now that she is running again.  She'll also get an outting tomorrow at the Ex-Coppers place too :-)

Picture a Bloke Hitting Himself

About 6 or so weeks back I spotted this cute little shunter on the Australian Modeller website and decided "Stuff it" and bought it for myself just because.  It was only DC, but was listed as DCC ready, so no probs there. So of course the first thing to do after ripping the packaging off the box and getting the loco out, was to give her a spin on the test track under DC.  The HO scale loco was of course one of the 2nd release Auscision NSW 73 class locomotives. She ran nicely and the lights worked fine.  So a bit of running in of the motor was done.

Of course it didn't take long for me to want to get the lid off and have a peek inside. So we have complex light boards at both ends, the light switching board for the lights at just to the right of centre and of course the DC plug in board where the DCC decoder is to go.... oh, a 6 pin socket...  Unusual for a HO locomotive, but not a biggy I suppose.  

So I hunted through my DCC Decoder box and found my N scale stash of spare decoders and surprise, surprise, I had a suitable beastie on hand - a Digitrax DZ125IN which has the correct NEM651 6 pin configuration that suits this new loco. The following pics show the DC board front and back at the top of each pic and the Digitrax DCC Decoder at the bottom of each shot.

So with my trusty tweezers, the decoder was inserted with the correct orientation and then tested - all good.  The lights worked front and back, as did the motor and she responded nicely on the test track.

So she sat around for the next 4 weeks as I was trying to get a hold of anyone who does decoder installs with sound for these 73 class locos.  Nup, nope, nada, nyet - no one that does the 73 class installation has stock of any decoders due to the current Covid problems around the world - the factories are all closed and no stock is available to them.  Well, I said to myself (I talk to myself a lot - mainly chastising myself for stuffing things up), I did happen to have a spare ESU LokSound v5 Micro Sound Decoder kicking about that could go into this loco if I wanted to. I would need to find a sound file for it as it was a blank one. Yeh, what the heck says I, and off I went and cleared a space to start.  Take up model trains they said - it's a relaxing hobby they said... 

So the loco has this little hatch on the roof so you can access the lighting combination switches without taking the whole body off.  So this lid was put in a box for safe keeping as I do tend to loose things from time to time and then have to spend ages finding the dang things.

Then the body came off.  At least with this model the body shell is not tethered to the mechanism with wires and such - nice and clean - remove it and place elsewhere (for safety or course...  now where is that box with the small lid again?)

Now, the decoder I had was an 8 pin type, so it wouldn't plug directly into the loco, so I was going to have to solder it in with some wires.  So to make sure I got things right, I documented the motherboard in the loco so I knew which wires were to go where.  I also researched the standards for 6 pin and 8 pin decoders to see what the correct coloured wires to use were.

Then I did it - I unsoldered the motherboard and took a gander up close to see how much room I had to manoeuver around with the soldering iron for when I took the 6 pin socket off the board.  Only the black socket at the right hand end had to go, the other ones are the lighting boards and could remain, as I reckon I just had enough room to not have to go that extra step since I was using the "micro" version of the decoder.

So the loco now was motherless, well, motherboardless. Fingers crossed I had the documentation right and a good plan.

Here we see the decoder and the orientation and location it should fit. I could have removed the Next18 to 8 pin ribbon cable and soldered directly to the decoder, as there are suitable solder pads there to do it, but in case I wanted the decoder for somewhere else, I thought I'd leave it as is.

So the 8 pin end of the cable has of course the 8 pins - duh.  So I ended up unsoldering these 8 pins so as to solder on my wires.

So next, that 6 pin socket was carefully desoldered from the motherboard.

Next, the correct coloured wires, in the correct order, were soldered onto the motherboard. The motherboard was then screwed back into place and the decoder test fitted to ensure it would fit - and yes it did.

The wires were then soldered to the 8 pin end of the connector cable as per the standards.

So next to test it.  With a smile on my face I put it on the test rig and both head and tail lights came on simultaneously and no movement was had, nor sound either for that matter.  Lots and lots and lots of head scratching, review of my method, standards and such were then done over the next day.  Research was done - heavy research.

Standards, correct colours - my backside!  It would appear I couldn't read a chart or document to save my life.  Well, actually it was my implementation that let me down.  So when transcribing the standard colours to the motherboard and my cables, I had forgotten to take into account that I was looking at it upside down and left to right and not right to left and proper side up... Confused?  I certainly was!

Luckily the decoder was not damaged at all. So after fixing my ballsup, it was back to finishing off the loco.  Wires were tidied up and some Kapton Tape used to hold it together and neat.

The walkway and loco cab detail with the drivers were then put back in place.  You will of course be wondering about the two brown wires still floating around - these are the wires to go to the speaker, which will be located in the roof of the loco shell.

Roof, cab roof, it's a roof.  So I used some fine double sided tape to locate the speaker in the roof of the cab after painting it white.  The speaker is an ESU 11mm x 15mm Sugar Cube speaker and I used the 3mm baffle kit on it.

The loco shell then went back on.

The cab went back on and now all that was left was to find where I had put the box with the switch cover!

Onto the test track and away she went - like a bought one.  I played with the settings a bit and programmed an Alco Switcher sound file to it for the time being as there are no proper NSW 73 class sound files out there in the free domain.  I'll have to contact the mob down south to see if he'll sell me just the sound file for my decoder.

But besides not have the exact correct sounds, she's a little ripper mate :-)

OK, Mr Murphy jumped in at this point. When I then went to turn on/off the marker lights for better running... a marker light in white and one in red at the front right had failed - arrrgghhhhh.  It could wait till the following day.

When I eventually got the lid off to see which wires had fallen off or LED's I had crushed, I found some black foam had gotten in between the LEDs and the aperture for them to shine through - phew!  Cleared it out and good to go.  Now it was complete :-)