Having tiled everything tile-able on the layout in between reloads, I've now got the ED to the point where I'm happy with the diesel flowchart, the electric flowchart and all the auxiliaries (compressor, horns etc). Next comes the tricky bit; how to program the changeover from diesel to electric and visa-versa, whilst maintaining authenticity and staying within the technical constraints of the chip. I'm not anticipating this to take too long but the annual sojourn to Model Rail Scotland is going
Developing sounds for the Loksound v4 chip involves periods of tweaks & adjustments to the various flowcharts followed by a 15 minute wait whilst the chip loads. You then check that the loco does what you want (which invariably it doesn't without further tweaking, but I digress).
Those 15 minutes are usefully spent doing real modelling, and today I've been roofing an old woollen mill with some laser-cut slate roofing tiles from York Model Making. The mill itself is a Walthers 'Background
Well my 'shoebox' is now trundling around the layout, on diesel power only so far. The poor running was (mostly) sorted by using the CV54 trick and reading the CV's back into the program. I've got basic auxiliary sounds working (horns, compressor, air release etc). Once I've made a bit more progress on these I'll move on to the electric sounds. The last stage I suspect, apart from the usual endless tweaking, will be to program the transitions from diesel to electric and visa versa. I'm quite ple
I had an enjoyable day out at Doncaster yesterday and succumbed to the persuasive powers of a superbly weathered Bachmann 37/5 in Railfreight Metals livery from 'Dirty Boy' / Lord & Butler. Whilst I am reasonably skilled at weathering, this was in a different league and I was happy to pay the money.
As a bonus the loco came pre-fitted with the latest SWD v4 chip so it was a good opportunity to listen to the competition. After trying it 'out of the box' it was clear that the dire speaker
I've just had a really enjoyable weekend in the company of the Airthey Park & Warren Lane crews who were kind enough to let me join them on the other side of the 'stage' and then socially afterwards. Experience of driving my sound-fitted locos in an exhibition environment allows me to optimise the chips for exhibitor's needs as well as everyone else's, so public thanks to everyone concerned. Apologies to Alan for driving my 86's into a non-electrified road on Warren Lane - doah!
With the
My Bachmann 20 is largely finished and I had hoped to make a couple of videos over the weekend but unfortunately real life intervened and no progress was made. You wouldn't believe how challenging it is to find 'quiet' time in an urban & family environment - there is always something 'noisy' going on. Not noisy so you would notice necessarily but the mic picks everything up so I like to film in an empty house where possible, and it hasn't been lately. The time hasn't been wasted though, as m
It's all gone quiet while I get my Bachmann 20 ready for its video debut. Star of the show will be the disc-fitted 20058, currently on the workbench getting the faded rail blue treatment to depict a loco in the last years of its life. I can't decide whether to team it up with the completed OTA rake or the 3 BDA's I've finished so far. This afternoon was spent hopping between the 20 itself and making steel billets for the BDA's. These are made from lead flashing sprayed first with red oxide prime
Coincidentally, a pal has given me a couple of 20's to turn into a v4 sound-fitted top & tail pair (to go with his RHTT set). Work is still in progress but they sound good whistling round together, with the horns etc only coming from the front loco and reversing when you change direction. This wonderous sight might make its way onto You Tube when I've finished tweaking the 20 sound and he's finished his RHTT.
Saturday saw a sojourn down to St Albans for the show followed by a bit of MML
I got sidetracked from the usual sound-based activities this morning by a bit of railway photography at Lea Marston. I also managed to fit in some 'real' modelling, having made a start on weathering my rake of BDA's. I spent yesterday morning round at a pal's where we milled the cast lumps off the underside of a Bachmann 20 and a Hornby 56, both in readiness for underframe mounted, downward facing speakers. Tonight's task was to turn Bachmann's clip-on battery box sides for the 20 into a rectang
The Class 20's do a nice little hiss when the reverser is operated, and a slightly longer one when the driver puts his foot on the deadman. We captured these when we did the recordings at the GCR so today's 20 minute task was to add these to the project. Needless to say things didn't go quite to plan. No hiss on reversing and no deadman sound, in fact the loco just sat there idling and refused to move. I'd got this feature working fine on the 118 dmu so I knew it worked. Most of the time if you
I finished creating / extracting the Class 20 engine sound clips this morning. In-between 'real' modelling I spent the rest of the day tweaking the flowchart to get the engine sounds driving how I want them. I'm probably about 90% of the way there with that, and fed up listening to just engine sounds so I added all the previously created 'auxiliary' sounds (horns, air sounds, door slams etc) to see how it all worked as a package. Probably another two or three days tweaking to go and version 1 wi
I did more work extracting the Class 20 engine sound clips last night. For a good v4 project you have to create approximately twice as many discrete clips compared to v3.5 so it's quite time consuming, but the improved responsiveness and all-round play value is definitely worth it.
I decided that a blog of what I'm up to sound-wise at the moment might be of interest and also provide a useful forum for discussion and feedback. Here's what I've been up to in the last few weeks. Imagine a butterfly flitting from one thing to another and you won't be too far off the mark :-)
Upgraded the 26, 27, 37/0 and 37/4 projects with 'multi-start' (user control of engine priming, cranking and starting (or not starting)). It's my intention to add this to all projects where appropriate
