Two days work has been invested in stripping the Aristo RS 3 and removing the DC boards and other paraphernalia.

It came with a chamber for the smoke unit and an 8 Ohm speaker built in  to the roof about midway along the body.  There are four DPDT switches  under a hatch in the main roof behind the speaker grille.  One of these  has been used to switch from the drive motors to an ancillary motor  under the chassis, inside the fuel tank.



The speaker was enclosed with sheets of 2 mm styrene, glued in place and  then caulked with PVA glue.  An Aristo smoke unit was installed which  has a cut out for when the oil runs out and a fan to drive the smoke  out.  It sits directly under the exhaust chimney.



A second fan was attached below the smoke chamber to turn slowly at idle  revs otherwise the smoke just comes out in wisps.  The Loksound V 3.5  XL board was screwed in place over the old DC board and a DCC Concepts 4  function motion decoder is attached to the back of the sound chamber.

The DCC Concepts decoder is piggy backed in and then locked.  It drives  the second fan and is programmed to operate the ditch lights, front or  rear; continuous or flashing.

The existing front and rear lights were retained, as were the number  board lamps and the cabin light.  The XL drives the drive motors and  powers the smoke unit, first fan and all lights except the ditch lights.



Here's a shot showing the second motor lashed up under the floor, inside  the fuel tank.  The ditch lights were fitted into the dummy lamp  mouldings on the pilots.  The mouldings were drilled out and fitted with  5000 mcd 3 mm high intensity LEDs. 

Working with a G scale loco is great - so much room!

Here's a close up showing the wiring of the two decoders.



I've Photoshopped it as best I can, but the white styrene flared something chronic. 

Nice work there Max. I was sitting here thinking "how the hell did he get all that in there" when I got to the bit where you said it was G scale.   I bet it sounds good.

Thanks, Peter.  It's certainly loud. 

The relative size of the DCC Concepts chip shows just how big this loco is Max :shock::shock::shock:

All extremely neat looking stuff - as ever. :cool wink 

How long will it be before you've sussed out how to have the driver waving at the trainspotters …………?  :cheers

Do the fans have some kind of guard over them ?  Just wondering how you stop the wires getting caught up in them…………. :hmm

Thanks, Peter.

The wires have those dinky little cable ties to keep them under control.  :cool:

Something different, Max.
Good work.

Thanks, Pete.  It's taking up all of my bench at the moment.  I'll be glad to get it done.

Next stop is the Lokprogrammer to adjust the Aux power to the idle fan, and get all of the sounds in the right places.

Now we have the final tranche of wiring completed.



So, now we have the standard head light and rear light, plus roof beacon, cabin light, step lights and ditch lights.

The DPDT switches in the upper body have now been converted to switch  the second decoder in and out for programming and to transfer the motor  power to the dummy load motor or the main motor blocks.

On to the Lokprogrammer for final adjustments and to map the various facilities to the desired buttons.

Here is the Function Map



The beacon is mapped to Aux 4 and is on all of the time.

This sheet might explain the mapping a bit more clearly.



The two decoders are a Version 3.5 Loksound XL with a DCC Concepts D4SAP  programmed, locked and piggy-backed on to it.  The Loksound starts the  sound, starts the smoke heater and starts the idler fan when button 8 is  pressed.

The DCC Concepts decoder runs the internal fan inside the smoke unit in  direct proportion to the opening of the throttle and also powers the  ditch lights which are mapped to follow the headlights/forward-reverse  selection.

Here's a video of the model running through the sequences.

I'm still not happy with the smoke patterns, but we've made a start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUAE5QC2cP4

http://www.youtube.com/v/dUAE5QC2cP4

If you could make the smoke black Max, it could be the real thing.

Really excellent. thumbs

Thanks, Peter.  In real life, the smoke is a grey brown colour.  Best I can do.