Yet another rebuilt Merchant Navy has finally been converted to DCC. Like the other recent ones, I have used a TCS M1 decoder hard-wired in. This time, it's my last unfitted Hornby MN, 35024, East Asiatic Company. The conversion went smoothly, since I had so much practice with the previous ones, although just to be really annoying, I tested it, put it all back together, tested again and one side's connecting rod and expansion link dropped off; the retaining screw had gone missing. I couldn't find the missing screw, but I knew that 12BA screws fit the thread, so shortened one to fit. It doesn't look very good in bare brass (I'll blacken it later), but it works.

Here are my, by now, usual portraits of 35024 in service.

Looks great Jeff, bet the screw will turn up in a couple of weeks when your not looking for it  


Ed

Hi Jeff.  Looking for a missing screw? When I lose one I usually find it by walking around bare footed, then I can locate it.   All the best. Kevin

Yes, that's often the case, Kevin, but these screws are so small they probably wouldn't even register on the pain Richter scale at all! 


There is another new arrival at Newton Broadway, bought at a price I couldn't resist. Up until recently, I had no possible excuse for buying the Heljan class 05 diesel shunter. With my recent interest in industrial locomotives, plus the attractive pricing, I purchased Heljan's Cider Queen version of the Hunslet 05. The Bulmers livery sits very nicely, although perhaps not quite in line with my 'generic' industrial user ideas.

The Hunslet was fitted with Bachmann's latest 6-pin decoder, 36-568, which is really a re-badged Zimo decoder, and I am very impressed with it too. It was a tight fit in the space, and I even shortened the pins slightly to make it fit more snugly.

I wasn't going to fit the nameplates, but decided that Heljan have also done a nice job with those, so they are now on the model.

In the meantime, I have also tweaked my fictional livery on the Hornby Sentinel diesel, with a few touch-ups of the blue, plus painting the steps and their recesses black, and adding a light grey cab roof. I still intend to add LNER style white/black/white lining along the cab sides and side panels.

Anyway, here are a few photos to illustrate the new addition and the various features I have mentioned.










The class 73 visible in the earlier photos is a Dapol model, which I have never been entirely satisfied with. Chief dissatisfactions were the colour (which I can't do much about without a complete repaint) and the cab lights being permanently on; Dapol's "solution" for the cab lights was to stick a bit of tape over the terminals, leaving them permanently off. They seem to think that was a perfectly reasonable "fix" for their shoddy design. 

Anyway, I followed a conversion done by someone on RMweb (for which many thanks are owed), which involved cutting the tracks on the PCB to R1 and between R1 and R2 (clearly marked on the board). Then, two wires had to be soldered between the correct pins and the two resistors, R1 and R2, allowing the cab lights to be controlled individually from the Aux 1 and Aux 2 functions.

To test my wiring, I removed the expensive sound decoder (ESU) and put a TCS decoder on - if I blew that up TCS would replace it under their goof-proof warranty conditions! Well, it all worked perfectly, with cab light at the #1 end turning on on F1, and #2 end on F2. 

Plugging the LokSound decoder (with Legomanbiffo sound) back in, the cab lights worked on F19 and F20.

While I had the soldering iron out, I also replaced the temporary speaker setup (the standard 23mm round one) with a bass enhanced rectangular speaker wired in parallel with a sugar cube speaker (both being of 8 ohm impedance). The sound is somewhat better than it was.

I put it all back together, then realised I had left the grey plastic 'shield' that stops one seeing the pcb under the central electrical compartment grilles, so off came the body again (four screws)!

Feeling pleased with my efforts and thumbing nose at Dapol for their poor customer relations and total lack of effort.

A small improvement to the Hornby Sentinel: I have added some lining to relieve the plain blue panels a bit.






​Next jobs: a coat of varnish and the addition of some etched plates, when they arrive, then a little weathering.

An unplanned purchase has added one more steam locomotive to the industrials: someone had a Hornby J94 in a lined maroon livery for $AUS50 at a recent BRMA meeting (approximately £20 - 22). While my preference would be for the newer DJM model, I was vacillating about whether to buy this or not. My wife offered to pay half to persuade me to buy it, so Harry now graces the line-up of colourful industrial locomotives. It caused me to renumber a couple of existing locomotives to keep the industrial numbering in an approximate date order of hen they might have been purchased by my mythical private owner. The Harry name will eventually be replaced with something different - I'll reveal a little more of my naming theme when the Narrow Planet nameplates arrive for some of the earlier locomotives.

Initially I tried a DCC Concepts small decoder (S4SAX) but that was still too large and would have required quite a chunk of the cast weight to be removed. Instead, I did a decoder swap with Hornby Arthur 30777, Sir Lamiel, putting a DCC Concepts Zen Nano direct plug-in decoder, and recovering the TCS M1P decoder, which, with its 8-pin plug cut off, was hard-wired to the J94, with only a very small hollow milled out of the weight to allow the wires to pass under it. I had some difficulty getting the cab and rear bunker to sit properly, with a resultant gap along the rear part of the saddle tank too, but eventually I got it all to sit properly, after consulting a much earlier topic on RMweb detailing the same problem and its solution. The photos show the locomotive before I had fixed the problem properly.

Harry now bears the number 10 on its bunker, following on from the pannier tank (given the number 9). The ex-class 05 (numbered 2 out of the box) will eventually bear the number 11 and possibly be renamed from Cider Queen, while the Hornby Sentinel now bears the number 12 (it was number 10 before but didn't display that number anywhere). The necessary adjustments were made to each locomotive's decoder. The numbers used are actually Bulleid's SR yellow 'sunshine' numbers with black shading. This style seems to suit the locomotives well.








Today, there was a nice surprise in the mail too: the first of my two DJM class 71s arrived. E5003 in the later green with small yellow panels was duly run on the rollers on DC for a while. All was well, so the next phase was to pull the top off (which was very nearly disastrous for the delicate pantograph when my grip slipped and I grabbed the falling loco right across the panto well!) and fit the ESU LokSound decoder that has been sitting in a box for some time awaiting the arrival of this model. I had already purchased the sounds from legomanbiffo and blown them onto the decoder.

I used the same speaker setup as I used on the Dapol class 73 a few days ago; that is, a bass enhanced speaker and a sugar cube speaker, both of 8 ohm impedance, were soldered in parallel to the solder pads on the PCB. The sound is good, without any tweaking done, although I may still experiment further.

As others have pointed out in the relevant class 71 topic, the DJM model really needs a decoder with five functions, whereas the LokSound only has four, although there are ways of getting the logical function outputs to do the job, with a little soldering of components. I don't intend to do this at this stage. I can't help thinking that because the marker lights were rarely used, I would prefer to use the aux outputs for those to operate the headcodes instead. I will work on this idea.

The third rail shoes were fitted with a glue somewhat less irreversible than cyanoacrylates, just in case I had to move them up for clearances. As it is, they worked fine where they are, so no adjustments are required. I have not, as yet, tried adding the lifting lugs.

E5003 is seen here on a short engineers train of Dogfish, Sealions and a Shark.

Hi Jeff   Excellent work as always. Now to my first time project. I have my "Brand new DJModels class 71 Loco"I have ordered from DC Kits, a Decoder, Bass Speaker, and Shrink tube to insulate the wires. Now for the "fun part"
How do I install .and connect the Bass Speaker into the Loco? Please advise.
All the best. Kevin

Hi Kevin.
There is a large open space for the speaker itself, and if you look carefully at that end of the PCB, right next to the white plugs, there are two solder pads, marked sp+ and sp-. Solder the speaker wires to those pads … it really doesn't matter which wire goes to which side.

Incidentally, Kernow have emailed me that my second class 71 is now on its way. E5004 in early green with white/red/white lining will only receive a non-sound decoder. I'll experiment with a TCS EU621 and a Lenz Silver + and see which gives better control.

Hi Jeff.   Thank you for your reply. Although I haven't received the speaker yet, I wasn't positive about the wiring, having been told to be careful otherwise I could "Blow the Speaker" or was it the Decoder ? I didn't want to risk it.
All the best. Kevin

Make sure the speaker(s) match the decoder's rating. For ESU LokSound v4 and Zimo, 4 or 8 ohm speakers are the go. If using two speakers, as I did, two 8 ohm speakers go in parallel, two 4 ohm speakers go in series.

For older LokSounds (v3.5), 100 ohm speakers are required, although they can cope with 50 ohm with the volume reduced - two 100 ohm speakers in parallel = 50 ohm impedance in total.

I have a couple of photos of my speaker installation now - one small sugar cube speaker, and one larger bass enhanced speaker, in parallel. You can see where the wires are connected to the PCB, adjacent to the white plugs and closest to the camera.






I'll try to get a video recording of the locomotive in action on the weekend, if possible.

Hi Jeff.  Thank you.  I am in the hands of  Charlie at "D C Kits", both Dave Jones and Legoman Biffo( Ian ) recommended him as their supplier , but I will check.   All the best. Kevin

Some further work has been done on locomotives for Newton Broadway.

First of all, here are a couple more photos of #10, Harry, with the body now seated properly!






Next, a Bulleid light pacific that was professionally weathered and renamed/renumbered: I bought this one off a friend, but soon realised that the name and number selected, 34033 Chard,  didn't match the wide cab body style. I eventually ordered some nameplates from ModelMaster for 34072, 257 Squadron, including the cabside numbering. I cleaned off the cabside weathering and removed the old numbers, then added the new waterslide numbers. The etched components, including the front smokebox number plate, were glued on, and the side oval plates had the waterslide crests added.

I will have to patch up the paintwork around the new nameplates and crests, but overall it has come out alright. Sorry the photos are not very good. I'll get better ones in daylight soon.






The third project was a 'banger blue' class 09. A long time ago, I bought the Hornby model of 09 012, Dick Hardy, in grey livery, with a view to repainting it. However, I liked it too much as it stood, so looked for a second Hornby model with the high level pipes. As far as I know, Hornby have only produced two such models; Dick Hardy, and an 08 in Cotswold Rail livery. Anyway, I managed to locate another Dick Hardy at a good price, so this is the one that has had a quick repaint into BR blue, leaving the wasp ends untouched.

What I wanted was a pre-TOPS numbered 09 with high level pipes, but, for some reason, photos of such a beast seem to be very rare. I have the Modern Locomotives Illustrated magazine on the 08, 09, 10, 11, 12 and 13 classes, but even that has an absolute dearth of photos of BR blue locomotives of any of the classes with pre-TOPS numbering. I have located one photo online, of 4107, with BR arrows on the cabsides and the numbers below the arrows. So, at the moment it looks like this model is going to become 4107 (no 'D' prefix).

These two photos show the 'before and after' effect, of 09 012 and the future 4107 in part-competed condition. The cab handrails have to be repainted white again, and the electrification flashes on the ends will have the earlier style added over the existing printed ones.



​

Some slightly better photos of 34072, 257 Squadron, also with 34083, 605 Squadron. As can be seen, 257 Squadron still has a couple of patches around the nameplates and shields to be blended back into the overall weathered finish.

The now BR blue Hornby class 09 has been numbered 4107. The early style of having the BR arrows on the cabside with the numbers below has been used, as per the photo of the real thing.

Overall it is looking the part already, but needs some weathering, plus some sort of replacement for the missing marker lights to complete it. The Southern Region 08s and 09s had two extra marker lights compared to other regions, with the norm being four and the SR norm being six. However, in later life, as per the Hornby model of 09 012, all but two marker lights were removed, leaving only the ones above the buffers at each end. In backdating my model, I need to put the missing four back again. Does anyone know of some suitable castings or mouldings, please?

I tried fitting the lifting lugs to E5003 experimentally and they cleared all of the tight spots on my layout, including all of the platform edges. However, I didn't think they looked right, because they stuck out too far even when pushed in as far as I could get them without damaging the bogies with too much force.

After looking carefully at close-up photos of the real ones, I decided that I could trim the fittings a bit and slot them in at a more realistic angle with a spot of glue, while still allowing sufficient bogie swing. The result is below.

Hi Jeff.  Regarding my long awaited class 71 DJ Models loco. The instructions from Bif on the wiring of the Speakers sound too much for me to handle? Airtight Speaker,The Wires too, I am a complete novice, are all Speaker jobs like this?  All the best. Kevin

The speakers for the DJ Models 71 are easy to wire. 

Most speakers come with wires already soldered to them, but even if they don't a quick touch with the soldering iron and pre-tinned wire should see a good electrical connection in micro-seconds.

Connecting the wires to the PCB on the loco itself are as I showed in post 591 above. There are two solder pads on the end of the circuit board, well away from most components. I remove the decoder just in case of accidents in any case. 
It does not matter which speaker wire goes to which solder pad, even though they are marked as + and -.

If you are attaching one speaker, that's it; job done.

If you are using two 8 ohm speakers in parallel, as I did, then the wires from both speakers have to be connected to the PCB solder pads.

Do not use two 4 ohm speakers in parallel; they need to go in series. Ask about that ONLY if you need to do it, otherwise ignore what I have said here.

As to making speakers air-tight, that simply enhances the sound output quality (and sometimes the volume too). I use Blu-tack or equivalents. Some speakers are already sealed and need no further work; the bass enhanced one in my installation is a case in point, as are some of the special speakers (EM1, EM2, etc.) from legomanbiffo and Charlie at DC Kits.

With the DJM class 71 there is plenty of room for a large speaker or two smaller ones, so easy to fit. There are some other models (the Hornby 71 for example) that leave very little room for speakers, so they become bigger problems simply from the viewpoint of physically fitting the speakers in,

Hi Jeff,

It's worth mentioning that when wiring multiple speakers it's important to keep them in phase. The other thing to keep in mind is the power to each speaker is reduced. 1watt output to one speaker is 1watt, to 2 speakers it's 0.5watt. Having 2 speakers is often worse than having 1 speaker unless you are dealing with 2-engine diesels (Warships or Westerns for examples). 

The reason why a speaker enclosure is important is to minimize  the back sound, which almost invariably negates the sound coming from the front (as it's usually out of phase) unless trapped in a box (the reason it sounds "louder"). I often build a box from thick styrene sheet and fill it with acoustic foam. The more mass the better, one of the reasons decent speakers are build from 0.5"/12mm VHDF. Silicone sealant rather than blue tack is a better choice. Helps if they can be securely fixed to the metal chassis, which soaks up the sound. One of the reasons tender located speakers often sound a bit off - not enough physical mass with the speaker often located on plastic and pointing down with the enclosure anchored to fresh air. Prime candidate for acoustic foam or a chunk of steel on the top.

DCC speakers are definitely low fidelity: Many (almost all, even the "ported bass" ones) do not have the frequency range to cover the deep rumbles found in diesels. They're just too small in HO/OO. Gets better in O or G, where you can have big speakers and even cross-over circuits for multiple speakers (low and high range). Not worth it in the smaller scales.

Nigel

Absolutely, Nigel. 

Working out the speaker phases can take a little bit of experimentation, but I have generally been lucky in getting it right by connecting the terminals from the same sides of each speaker together.

I have found that the overall volume of the two speakers is greater than the single volume, particularly with the 100 ohm speakers needed for LokSound v3.5 decoders; the requirement to keep the volume below 50 to reduce the power demands is generally a bit academic as a volume of 20 to 25 has often proved to be more than adequate. While each speaker on its own produces less volume on the reduced power, the reduction doesn't seem to be proportional, so the combined volume seems, subjectively, to be greater.