I often find that as a project is nearing completion it pays to step away from it for a while and do something else. You then return to it with a fresh pair of ears, add the finishing touches and iron out any last remaining niggles. As such, I have briefly stepped away from the 40 to the Voyager.

I upgraded one end of my Bachmann Voyager from a v3.5 to a v4 some time ago but never got around to the other. Having now fitted the second chip and ran it, I found that the engine sound editing and programming was a little short of my current standards. Having spent a couple of days on it I'm now much happier. I've also added a handful of new features including; the ability to start the intermediate engines one at a time, two slightly different engine shutdowns, and a more accurate recreation of the 'forward' position on the driver's controller on the prototype.

On a real Voyager, the driver selects forward when getting ready to move off. The engine revs rise but nothing more happens until the controller is advanced further, whereupon the set moves off. Similarly, when coming to a standstill, the set can be left in forward (and hence at slightly higher revs) until the driver puts the controller to idle or moves off again. The principle is exactly the same as my latest electric projects (85, 87, 90 etc), and has now been enabled with the Voyager.

The project has been prototyped as a 'single' chip version, now I need to make the necessary modifications for the two-chip version so that the horns etc change ends when the set reverses, the engine starts and stops are staggered and so on.

Tonight's good news was that Charlie has finally found a Heljan 7mm Deltic down the back of his sofa. This will be passed onto me at Warley so I can prototype the Deltic sound project in it.

The photograph was taken at Milton Keynes, one of my series of 'railwaymen at work'. Try covering the despatcher and guard with your thumb and you'll find the photo much less interesting.