DCC chip in to my first steam loco. HELP.

[owentherail]

I've just got my first steam loco, (after many diesels), Bachmanns Rood Ashton Hall... How and where do I fit a chip. Space for a direct chip is too small and other chips seem wider than the inner body!! Help!!!

[Froxfield2012]

Buffers of Axminster have a .pdf guide accessible through their website showing fitting a DCC chip to a Bachman Hall.  Bascially, you remove the weight from the slot under the boiler and thread the wires back past the motor in the channel/clips provided.  This worked for me when I attacked Conyngham Hall recently, although I found it difficult to fit all the wires along the slot and ended up trimming a couple off.

 

Try a little quality time on Google.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

... How and where do I fit a chip. Space for a direct chip is too small and other chips seem wider than the inner body!

Imagination is key.

 

The manufacturers typically mount the socket poorly in one or more respects: location, orientation, with unnecessary consumption of internal volume etc.. Sometimes the problem can be solved by nothing more than unscrewing the socket from its mounting, and cutting away the mounting upstands, then fixing the socket down with an insulating sticky pad; releasing more internal volume and optimising location and/or orientation in one fell swoop.

 

Sometimes the vertical dimension is greater than the width - especially in smokeboxes - the decoder can go in at any angle.

 

The manufacturer's ballast is terribly inefficient, since they cannot use lead. But you can, and then can free half the volume taken up by ballast while keeping the weight of the loco the same.