blueaeshna

According to Railway Modeller mag Bachmann have now done a "City of Bath" in GWR livery and at trainwest in Melksham last weekend I saw a Bachmann "City of London" with red frames.

I forgot to mention, yes the firebox flickers, and can either be left on random with fireman sounds (seems to come on more frequently when loco is stationary) or switched on and off with F15 on the Howes chip, I was very pleased with how fire-like it actually looks, especially when the glow reflects off the crew and pipework. I replaced the pcb in the tender in the end with a SW Digital decoder board with AUX 3 and 4 circuitry for added lighting control.

doh! Cheers, I have driven a loco but couldn't remember, so I just put them where they seemed to look right, ah well, easy job to stick 'em on the other way once they've finished breakfast.

Here are a couple of pics that I took of my City of Truro conversion running on Shirehampton MRC's layout at their open day last weekend. The firebox is glowing nicely, I think the fireman is ready to cook breakfast! Its the first time I've managed to run it on a decent layout with functioning sound and lights and it was fabulous. I still need to do the buffer detailing and the lamps were a bit of a compromise due to available control functions. When the lighting is switched on with F0 the two lamps on the buffers are white in forward direction and the lower tender lamp is red, when in reverse the upper tender lamp is white and the lamp on the boiler is red. The two tender lamps can be switched off independently (F16 & 17) when the loco is hauling a load. It would have been nicer if bi-colour red/white LEDs had been available in the lamps.

Following up my post on the firebox LED's, my sound chip has now arrived. I also discover there are no pads on the pcb in the tender for aux1 & 2 or front and rear light and blue + wire which means some very delicate soldering to the actual 21 pin socket will be required, this again is something that should be addressed in future models as it is very inconvenient, I don't want to solder to the actual chip, 8 pin would have been so much easier. Also the rear speaker baffle supplied by Howes which is a standard baffle for this size speaker is slightly too wide and deep to fit the tender so will have to be modified if I'm going to use it (which I intend to do), I know a lot of folk just chuck them away but they add considerably to the volume. I have removed the metal coal lump as described earlier in this forum and it did not come away without wanting to drag one of the toolboxes with it. It is a disguised weight so will have to be compensated for somehow. I will probably make a hole in the flat area under the coal for the speaker and make a speaker grille from black net material and then disguise that cunningly with a real coal load, I'll try to photograph as I go so at least you can have a laugh while I cut up my model, hopefully it'll still run when I finish otherwise its a very expensive experiment. Mike.

I'll get a photo of it when its all back together, still waiting on the decoder yet- a loksound 4 so lots of lighting control. Just ordered a set of dcc concepts bicolour loco lamps from digitrains so they will need to be fitted (what colour to paint them and lighting combinations to program need to be sorted out) I also need to experiment with resistors for the firebox leds, the picture above was taken with a 22k but it could go as low as 220 ohms according to the LED spec, (if 5 in parallel), so they can go a lot brighter than the photo, need to work in the risk that if one goes out as it did in test then the others will get zapped with more current, a 1k should be fairly safe. I was looking at the possibility of chuff sync with the sound chip using magnets & a hall sensor but it seems its safer to do it just by altering the cv settings while counting the wheel revs, I'll leave all that til I've got the little beauty running on dcc first. It would be nice if, perhaps for future models, manufacturers would leave a small gap behind the firebox doors knowing that fitting LEDs here is becoming increasingly popular, it'd save the risk of breaking the thing by cutting out metal to make room. Mike.

I am waiting on a sound chip from Howes for my C of T and whilst looking at the blurb for it I noticed that Aux 1 is mapped to the random fireman sounds. Hmm I thought, while I'm waiting I'd set about trying to install an illuminated firebox. As it turned out, this is not a job for the faint hearted. I did not want to drill holes as some folks do, and when I examined the firebox doors they looked cut-outable. Thinking OMG what am I doing to my lovely model, I removed the loco body shell and gritting my teeth set about it with a sharp scalpel..why can't I just leave things as they are. Anyway, with care I managed to cut out the doors leaving the opening handle intact, there is a gap between the moulding and the firebox facia. I then re-inserted the chassis to see how much clearance I had behind the doors...none! B.....ks! There was just the small groove the motor wires sit in. I decided that whatever I put in there needs to be small so I purchased 5 off 0805 size surface mount orange LEDs from www.phenoptix.com and made a little stripboard to mount them using strips of sticky back copper tape on stiff paper with a double sided tape backing, there was a row of 3 and a row of 2 all wired in parallel onto 3 tracks with the centre track as the + and the outer 2 wired together as the -. Onced I'd done this and had its dimensions I had to mill out a slot for it to fit in the motor housing and attached weight, also deepening the groove for the 2 motor wires, all this without putting the milling cutter through into the gearbox. The milling was very rough and ready because the chassis was difficult to hold on the machine without completely stripping it, which I didn't want to do. Well I managed it and stuck my LED array in place with rapid epoxy as you can see in the pictures and threaded the wires through to the tender coupling, replacing the body shell, on first test one of the LEDs didn't work, I couldn't get the chassis back out without breaking the array so I had to carefully resolder it in situ trying not to melt anything. Now all I need to do is glue the doors back on and put the loco back together...lights next I hope this helps anyone else mad enough to try the same, good luck! Mike.

Thanks for the info Kevin, I'll have a go at those cv values and see how the 205 responds. Cheers, Mike.

Hi Kevin, I've been browsing your Leaford pages with admiration for the past few days, a lovely layout which has inspired me to actually join RMweb. I am a recent returnee to railway modelling since childhood, a 40 odd year lapse I first found the pages whilst looking for info on Class 205 models and found your very useful info on electrical pickups, I will likely use something akin to this to illuminate my trailing coach so thankyou for the post. I have built a DC kits thumper, my first model since taking it up once more and its green like the ones I remember. It has been sitting about for a few months waiting for me to afford a DCC chip for it (as I wanted sound), do you have a sound chip fitted to yours, if so how did you get on with it? I went with a Loksound 4 from Olivias as it was the only place I could find that had a thumper. It sounds great but I think needs a bit of tweeking that I can't seem to get right at the moment, (especially when it stops)...the lighting will come next so thanks for the help! Best wishes, Mike.