Now that the loco is finished, work can now start on the tender. There are a lot more photos in this section as more work was carried out here than in the loco.

The tender top was removed, followed by the wheels and weights. Each weight was then cut into smaller pieces and these were fitted to the front, rear and both sides of the tender top, keeping everything away from the decoder, to prevent short circuits and to retain the tenders original weight. The weights are insulated with a tape that is similar to Kapton tape.

Weights attached inside the tender top.

Next I removed the rear fixing spigot from the tender top, as close to the top as I could get, the top is now held on by only the front screw, but this doesn't seem to be a problem. The 21 pin decoder socket was then attached to the rear of the tender base with a small screw, the speaker will be located at the front, below the coal storage area, as there was plenty of room for it there. The decoder socket is a little too long for the area that I wished to fit it, but I got round this by lifting one end up, using the removed spigot as a spacer, so that the socket is at a slight angle when viewed from the side.

Side on view of decoder installation

I then drilled 4 small holes to enable a larger hole to be made for the 4 pin tender socket, also fitted by a small screw. I then wired the 4 pin socket to the 21 pin decoder socket, using short lengths of red, black, orange and grey cable ensuring that the correct polarity.

View showing the 4 pin socket fitted.

A small section from the front of the tender top had to be removed just below the footplate to make room for the 4 pin socket's PCB. I also had to file a small a flat section on the remaining front fixing spigot. It was now time to test the work I'd so far completed. I re-fitted the tender wheels, inserted a 21 pin blanking plug and connected the loco to the tender, via the 4 pin plug and socket . It was again placed on my rolling road, DC power was then applied to ensure that it worked as it should, before doing any further work, and once again everything was working as it should. The loco and tender were again separated so that the next stage could begin.

Close up of cutout for 4 pin socket as seen from the inside.

As seen from the front of the tender.

As seen from the front when tender completely assembled

The wheels and blanking plug were once again removed. I then placed the speaker casing below the coal storage and marked the area that it would occupy. I then drilled a series of small holes within that area of the tender base (I lost count how many), to enable the sound to escape. I also drilled 2 fixing holes for the speaker casing. The decoder and speaker were then fitted and the small unused slots in the speaker casing were covered with tape and black-tac to ensure that no sound could escape into the tender. Once again it was time to test the loco, but this time using DCC, yippee, it worked.
Everything was then re-assembled and the tender was attached to the loco, I then gave it a short run on my test track.

Sound holes below speaker mounting.

The whole thing connected up read to roll.

The next phase will to make up some pick-ups for the tender wheels.