Choice of sound decoder for Heljan mogul.

[Adrian Stevenson]

It is by Legomanbiffo.

 

Cheers, Ade.

[Stringfingerling]

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread; it's been very helpful.  I now have my Mogul and I'm working through a few minor issues before adding a decoder.   

The most serious was that immediately on testing the loco locked solid and wouldn't move.  I was thankful that I had some experience of building locos in EM gauge with limited crosshead clearances; it was fixed with a bit of careful tweaking of the slide bars and motion bracket and now runs beautifully under DC.  
One of the front buffers fell off when I touched it - annoying but easily fixed. 
The two central cylinder drain cock pipes were  hanging on by a thread and were loose.  Again, fairly easy to fix, but because they are so small and delicate it took a while.
The front pony truck wheels were set slightly narrow gauge - this is probably more obvious on  my layout with 0-MF pointwork than on a standard O gauge layout, but again easily remedied.

I'm planning on using the Loksound decoder from DC Kits as per Adrian's suggestion, and I may well use the same speaker as him, mounted in the tender.  The idea of a second speaker of the YouChoos design in the space provided underneath the loco is intriguing, though I wonder about total current draw for two speakers?

[charliepetty]

The decoder is a LokSound L Decoder, which is plug & play and from Wheeltappers, all you have to do is solder on the speakers.  The speaker used by Adrian is a Bass Reflex 4Ohm speaker.

The options on the Website are one OR two Bass Speakers (If you require 2 X Speakers at 8Ohms and wire them the parallel this would be fine)  Put in the comments box on the ordering page 'PLEASE SUPPLY 2 X 8Ohms SPEAKERS PLEASE' 

The link to order is: https://www.dckits-devideos.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=228_258&product_id=1632

 

Happy Christmas Charlie

[Guest WM183]

I must admit being puzzled that for a 600 pound loco, these not only come with only tender pickup, but also with detail parts falling loose. What possible reason is there for tender only pickup anyway?

[gismorail]

I would agree with above comments as I have been pondering as to whether to purchase one of these locos ever since they were launched. The main thing stopping me is the tender pick up only ....and as WN183 says on a £600 Loco now there seems to be issues with bits coming adrift 

[Hal Nail]

1 hour ago, WM183 said:

What possible reason is there for tender only pickup anyway?

This has been discussed at length in the mogul thread.

 

The wheelbase of the tender is longer than the loco

[Guest WM183]

1 hour ago, Hal Nail said:

This has been discussed at length in the mogul thread.

 

The wheelbase of the tender is longer than the loco

 

Ok. So put pickups on both? I mean... I am just puzzled is all.

 

[Stringfingerling]

I've now installed my Loksound V5L in the Mogul, and either due to my lack of knowledge of my NCE Powercab or for whatever reason it didn't work at all at first, but "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" did the trick.  Initially the running was very lumpy under DCC - I have no idea whether I had upset something or not.  I tried the "set CV54 to zero and let it race away then stop" trick advocated on the DCKits leaflet, which helped but I found that gradually adjusting CV54 downwards from the value that that procedure had set (about 40-50 I think) improved matters a lot. It's now set at 20 and the running is pretty good though I think a bit more tweaking will improve it further.   
I'd be interested to know what values other people have set for the start voltage, mid speed voltage, and top speed voltage - obviously these are not read as actual voltages but as values from 0-255.  
 

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Stringfingerling

[simons9]

Appreciate this is fairly old topic. I have standardised on all my Dapol and lion heart locos on Hornby HM7000 DCc 21 pin nexus which  has worked a treat . The old lion heart pannier had a previous version of adaptor so I bought a later Dapol one which was easy swap. 

Question is on Heljan 43xx would I have to unsolder and resolder all the connections if I use a Dapol , pretty sure that is answer and thought I’d check there isn’t an adapter . Also if anyone offers this service , thanks