I bought a second Sutton's Locomotive Works class 24, D5016 with sound, and it duly arrived in Melbourne. On test, it worked fine but emitted clicks and pops from the speakers whenever it was placed on powered tracks, programmed, or power was switched on when already on the track. There were a couple of anomalies with the functions but a decoder reset fixed those. Jamie from SLW suggested I swap the decoder into my previous SLW class 24, D5000, and D5000's decoder into D5016 and see what happened. The clicks and pops persisted with the decoder when in D5000, and the other decoder now in D5016 was silent when it should be, thus indicating a fault with the decoder itself. Jamie immediately sent me a replacement decoder, which arrived within a week, and all is now perfectly well with both locomotives.

I cannot praise Jamie and SLW enough for their excellent, polite and very helpful follow up service.

Having ascertained that I won't have to return the locomotive itself, I have now renumbered D5016 to D5017, which remained on the Southern Region for around three years, as opposed to D5016's stay on the SR which was only for a month. I removed only the 6's, using a wooden toothpick and a little moisture, then added the 7's using HMRS pressfix transfers - the height of the transfer numerals was slightly greater than the SLW ones, so I cut the bottom off the leg of the HMRS numerals to line up (one has a fraction too much lopped off, but I can easily disguise that when it dries properly). However, I may have to redo the other numbers because the HMRS ones are very slightly bolder, but it will suffice for now.

I have reconfigured the headcode discs on both locomotives, but neither is yet sporting the extra SR lamp irons (or headboard brackets as SLW refer to them), although I have the etched components to fit.

Anyway here are a couple of pics, the first showing the newly renumbered D5017, and the second showing the two SLW locomotives, D5000 and D5017 in multiple (i.e. a DCC consist).

For running in consist, I modified the decoder settings to allow functions 1, 2, 5 and 6 to work with the consist address, thus allowing the sound to be turned on for both at once, the brake function (F2) to work on both (otherwise applying the brake only stopped the front loco, with the rear one pushing it on!), and the engine sounds of both to be returned to idle. Function 5 reduces the inertia/momentum to simulate light engine/light load running.