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.