My N Gauge sound & Stay alive posts

[Alterstone_ngauge]

I thought I would share my experiences of adding sound and stay alive to N Gauge locos as I'm getting through a lot of them these days.

 

I always add stay alive regardless of space limitations. Other than varying the height of the enclosure from model to model, I only ever use full size sugar cube speakers. Anything smaller doesn't sound right to me.

 

If the loco has a tender I always like to close the gap down to a realistic distance too - the gaps can be pretty wild sometimes.

 

Finally I’ll add a real coal load, fit the crew and finish off with weathering.

 

 

Graham Farish Ivatt 2mt

 

Here’s a picture of the Finished job on my layout.

 

 

 

Space is tight on this model but everything fits fine in the end. The decoder sits towards the back of the tender with the SACC16 board on top.

 

 

 

Then I soldered two capacitors together as tightly as I could. I drilled two small holes either side in the tender chassis to connect to the capacitors. (2x flat 470uf tantalum capacitors) I had to remove the plastic detailing in between the wheels to locate these. The moulded detail here serves no purpose as it’s underneath the tender and not really visible. A blob of black tac allowed me to locate it so none of the wheels or axles touch and create drag. Then I used a tiny bit of superglue once happy.

 

 

A third 470uf capacitors seemed to fit nicely in this crevice. In order to get the speaker to fit, I had to mill down some of the “thickness” of the coal area sides. It goes through nicely after this and no compromise to the model.

 

 

Finally, to shorten the tender gap is super easy and took 5 minutes. Just cut some clearance away from the inside of the drawbar, cut the plastic end shorter and the brass wires - then simply bend the brass wires around the pickup bar. Very effective.

Looks and sounds great. With 1440uf of backup, I ran it down my layout on slowest speed and it literally took half an hour and It didn’t stall once.

Here’s a quick video ;

http://youtu.be/soLCXReMkzQ

 

Thanks for reading - I hope this is of interest to some.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Alterstone_ngauge

[TomE]

Excellent work! It hadn't crossed my mind to make use of the space under the tender for tantalums, I might have to investigate the possibility of that arrangement on the C Class. 

 

Cheers, 

 

Tom. 

[Alterstone_ngauge]

On 01/02/2020 at 20:28, TomE said:

Excellent work! It hadn't crossed my mind to make use of the space under the tender for tantalums, I might have to investigate the possibility of that arrangement on the C Class. 

 

Cheers, 

 

Tom. 

 

Hi Tom

 

love your layout.

 

Under the tender seems to be where it’s at for the pesky low tender models. There’s literally so much space! (Relatively speaking of course)

 

Saw you had done the 9f and I suspect you did a similar thing to me ? 

I laughed at your comment about shed queen to useable loco. It’s very true. My front pony truck was derailing everywhere too, so I drilled a tiny hole at a 45 degree angle above it and pushed in a 0.25 brass rod and bent it down over the front. Literally perfect everywhere now. The same concept as the Dapol one, but it never seemed to work. 
 

here’s mine ;

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TomE]

3 hours ago, Alterstone_ngauge said:

 

Hi Tom

 

love your layout.

 

Under the tender seems to be where it’s at for the pesky low tender models. There’s literally so much space! (Relatively speaking of course)

 

Saw you had done the 9f and I suspect you did a similar thing to me ? 

I laughed at your comment about shed queen to useable loco. It’s very true. My front pony truck was derailing everywhere too, so I drilled a tiny hole at a 45 degree angle above it and pushed in a 0.25 brass rod and bent it down over the front. Literally perfect everywhere now. The same concept as the Dapol one, but it never seemed to work. 
 

here’s mine ;

 

 

Haha, I have indeed done almost exactly the same with my 9F! 
 

I may have to steel your idea for the pony truck too. Mine has a tendency to track to the right and derail through one point in Particular when running forward. 
 

Cheers,

 

Tom. 

[dpgibbons]

Any thoughts please as to how much stay-alive capacitance you need? I'm struggling to find room for more than 2x220uF tantalums in a Dapol 3500gall GWR tender, even with the smaller Tramfabriek motor and casing. 

[Alterstone_ngauge]

On 01/03/2020 at 03:52, dpgibbons said:

Any thoughts please as to how much stay-alive capacitance you need? I'm struggling to find room for more than 2x220uF tantalums in a Dapol 3500gall GWR tender, even with the smaller Tramfabriek motor and casing. 

 

 

I recommend 2x470uf minimum to make it really reliable at crawl speeds and on dirty track. It does depend how dirty of course, and on the models pickup capability before fitment. Upwards of two starts to make any steam tender loco pretty invincible. I wouldnt use 220uf at all just doesnt seem worth the effort and space. have you considered under the tender like my Ivatt above? that had zero space after large speaker and decoder, but managed to get in 3x470uf using the sace underneath.

[dpgibbons]

Going under the Dapol 3500gall tender looks challenging as there is a weight, water scoop and brake rodding in the way. If my physics is correct, on a 15VACC DCC system a 2 *330uf capacitor stay alive (which is what I'm using) will store 0.075J of energy giving 0.5s of power at 0.1A, equating to about 5mm of travel at a scale 5kmh in N. That might be enough to overcome the intermittent tender pickup issue, so I'll see how that goes.