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More LEDs

jamesg

Entry posted by jamesg

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Very little work has been done on the layout recently. My focus instead has been on locomotives and rolling stock. After adding a firebox LED to Whitechapel a few weeks ago, I thought about adding a more conventional cab light to the Class 08. This is wired to the decoder in series with a resistor and placed in the cab in place of the speedometer.

 

Gronk

 

Quite pleased with the result, I went about adding an LED to the cab of the Hornby Sentinel as well. The Sentinel has the same type of decoder as Whitechapel, so it doesn't support functions - or so I thought until testing the pads on the PCB with a multimeter. The X9659 decoder used by the Sentinels is very similar to the R8249 decoder, which supports forward and reverse lighting and two additional functions. The location of each function on the PCB is included in the manual - DCC function 1 is at J9 and the common supply is J6 (you'll need a magnifying glass to find them). Very carefully soldering onto these pads, and hey presto! A controllable cab light.

 

Rolls-Royce Sentinel

 

One last thing - I discovered derailments when rolling stock with different sizes of tension lock coupling are used in the same train. It looks like the hook on the larger coupling was forcing the smaller one off the track. I built some new narrow couplings without hooks out of plastic card and replaced some of the larger couplings with the smaller type. On a lot of Hornby wagon chassis, the large coupling is riveted in place. The rivet can be drilled through and the new coupling fixed with an M2x10 bolt and nut.

 

Coupling

 

Every wagon has either two Bachmann couplings or one Bachmann and one home made coupling, with all the home made couplings facing the same way - not a problem for Haroldston East as there's nowhere for wagons to be reversed.

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BlueLightning
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Looking good. Interesting about the Sentinel decoder. I might have to add that to my list of things to do!!

 

Gary

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