badgerV8

Cheers for that Paul - one issue with the Zimo one, the engine revs on an 08 don't rise like that before it moves off, and that spoils that particular sound project for me.

Hi folks, after opinions on who does the best sounds for an 08 shunter please. I see some advertised on ebay but there never seems to be any stock when I'm looking for 8-pin micro V4...… and some I've found on the internet are considerably more expensive than others and I'm not convinced there's that big a difference to justify the extra cost? It's a Hornby shunter, so if anyone has personal experience of speakers and location as well, that would be appreciated, many thanks. Feel free to message me if you don't want to publicly recommend one persons product over another's, cheers.

Guys, I'm based in the north of Scotland, near Elgin. I've a toolmaker's Bridgeport mill in the workshop and don't mind doing bits and bobs for "beer money", if anyone up this way wants a chassis milling out. You mark it out, I'll mill it to your marks!

I did my 25 with a sound chip from Coastal - sounds good to me, no issues.

Update on the Deltic. I've wired an 8 ohm sugarcube in series with the EM2, giving 12 ohm. I have then wired a second 8 ohm sugarcube in parallel with the series circuit, giving an effective overall impedence of 4.8 ohms. The sound volume has dropped, but the high frequency sounds are back, almost too loud in comparison to the low-end. Fitting the bodyshell back on caused the higher-frequency to become all echo-like and horrible, so I tried to tone it down a touch by placing foam over the two sugarcubes. That didn't work as I'd hoped, so I tried a bit of a radical approach (some may call it a bodge, haha) - I put a thin coating of PVA over them and that's damped them down just enough and got rid of the echoing within the shell but hasn't killed the high frequency sounds. With the volume level cranked back up to 110, it now sounds good to my ears. 37 next, going to use an 8 ohm bass reflex this time I think, in parallel with a single sugar cube with minimal enclosure and see how that sounds.

Hi All, looking for painting help in the north of Scotland, Elgin / Inverness / Keith or surrounding areas.... I've a green Bachmann class 37, split headcode version, and I'm looking for someone who can apply small yellow ends and re-number it for me please? I'll happily carve up a loco to install sound, but neat and tidy painting is beyond my abilities! Happy to pay going rate, thanks. NOW SORTED, THANKS.

Hi all, I don't suppose there's anyone in the Elgin / Inverness / Keith or surrounding areas that could help me? I'm looking to have small yellow ends applied to a green Bachmann class 37, split headcode version, and the running number changed at the same time. I am absolutely useless with paint when it comes to anything needing any sort of accuracy......! Happy to pay going rate for the work, thanks.

Slightly off-topic, but.... the main issue for the North of Scotland (Inverness to Aberdeen service) is overcrowded trains. Despite continual multiple complaints, the operator maintains they are safe, even with 40 or 50 standees at times.... this is on sprinter-type trains, not sure of any class numbers for all this modern stuff, sorry! What's needed up here is 5-car units at peak times and 3-car the rest of the day, but I suspect we'll end up with 3-car units all day and the current problems of overcrowding will not be addressed in any way, other than standees fighting to remain upright within faster accelerating trains! A pity they won't have valenta engines, would have been nice to hear them scream again as a train accelerates hard.

Well, what a sound! I had to take the whole thing back to pieces again to put black-tack between the plastic frame and the chassis block to stop the whole thing buzzing like mad, but other than that it sounds awesome. My only criticism - whilst it's loud and deep at idle and moving off, the sound level seems to decrease as it moves faster and the revs get higher, to the point that it's almost too quiet when belting along at high speed. I'm tempted to try a sugar cube with minimal enclosure under the fans at one end, wired in series, to see if that helps with the top-end sounds a bit. I think there's enough volume left in it to risk it dropping a bit as a result of the impedance change....

Thanks Albie, especially for the speaker wire warning. I've thinned down the sides this morning, a bit of a split on one edge where the top plate is glued to the chamber but that'll be resolved by trickling an appropriate glue back along the seam before fitment. Looks more like a bit that didn't have glue right across the mating surfaces during manufacture than anything else, to be honest. I now have the speaker fitting into the tank area very snugly and the chassis block trimmed for clearance where required - I'll brave soldering speaker wires, glueing the speaker back together and maybe assembly this afternoon. If this works, a 37 is next maybe..... just wish the EM2's were 8 ohm so I could double up, I can't justify the cost of two decoders for the "Atomic" version sadly, haha.

Hi folks, can anyone tell me how thick the sides of an EM2 speaker enclosure are? I've seen all the posts on converting a Deltic to sound, but no-one (as far as I can see) has actually said just how much material can be removed from the sides of these speakers? Anyone shed some light please?

I've had very good results with Loksound Micro decoders recently, as I've started to convert most of my fleet. I've sourced steam ones (4mt tank, 5mt) from Coastal and been very happy with their sound files, I've sourced diesel ones from Howes, DC Kits (legomanbiffo), C&PRR and Coastal, and been happy with their sound files also. Price-wise, in my opinion you'll be hard pushed to beat Coastal & Howes (in no particular order). I've no connections with any of these suppliers, other than a satisfied customer.

Decent D49 would be nice, anything Highland or Caley would be good as well.

1. I can't find it. 2. The computer had to be replaced because of failure, not possible to transfer from a fried hard-drive (or it wasn't, when I enquired at the time!). 3. Lessons learnt, it won't happen again!

Well, the "autotune" helped a lot, and I was then able to go in and fine-tune the speed curve. Now, I'm trying to get the "chuff rate" back in sync..... adjust slow rate 1 or 2 steps, massive effect on fast rate and vice versa, nothing's ever easy, haha. Getting there... I had thoughts of a second 4MT for my layout, but after the hassle this one's given me, I don't think I'll bother!

That's good info Nigel, thank you for that. I'll head up to the loft and try it. The seller of the sound chip actually told me to do that with a 5MT chip that I bought at the same time and it sorted it's jerky starting out - all he said was "the 5MT needs this procedure", he never said anything about the 4MT so I assumed the chips were programmed differently! I did later ask him if the 4MT needed the same procedure but I haven't had a reply yet - it is the weekend though, so no worries there, I don't expect people to be tied to a computer 24/7. That would be extremely unreasonable, hence why I was trying to be smart and "fix it" myself, haha. I'll report back.....

Nigel, thanks for that info, do all Loksound V4 chips have this autotune feature? Sorry, I'm reasonably new to digital control....

The accel and decel rates are fine, in fact very realistic as set, I've no issue with these. it's the fact that there's little control of the actual steady speed between a slow crawl and fast, hence why I want to alter the actual speed steps. I'm using Railmaster on the laptop, so have all values displayed in front of me, no handset. It seems to write the new values okay and then checks them (in Programme mode obviously) reporting that all are now at the values I have set, but then as soon as I go back to Main mode and try to operate the loco, it's the same as before. If I then switch back to programming mode and read the CV's again, they've all defaulted back to their original values, not what I'd re-written them as..... Something weird is going on here, haha.

Hi John, thanks for the reply. I'm using Hornby Railmaster and eLink, never had any issues writing cv's until now, this is about the 11th loco in my fleet that I've converted, maybe I've just been lucky so far, haha. This loco has been determined to try my patience and push me to the limit since I started converting it. It's a first-release Bachmann 2-6-4 Standard 4MT, not the easiest of units to take apart, with various bits of delicate pipework catching, a decoder "space" that's overly small and most people apparently remove the spigots that hold the dcc circuit board and socket, and hard-wire instead, to get space for the decoder. This is the route I've taken as well (after some excellent "how-to" write-ups on this forum), and I've fitted it with an ESU Loksound V4 and sugarcube speaker in the cab. It's already had to have two CV8 resets as the controller wouldn't recognise it after I changed its address originally, then I had no motor control function, now I have it working and back together but the speed step programming is a bit of a joke really, like I say it's approaching half speed before you get to 1/4 throttle with 6 coaches behind it! I'm curious if there's maybe another CV that has to be altered first, to allow you to alter the speed step CV's? I'll email the supplier that I bought the sound chip from, he's been helpful so far when I couldn't get it to do anything after the initial address change. Love the sound, it's a good example of the real thing, but it seems to be never-ending hassle with this loco.

Trying to set up a Bachmann 4MT tank.... When you move off forwards, speed step 1 is a slow crawl, which is fine. Speed steps 2 and 3 are gentle increases on this, but then speed step 4 is way too fast, the loco reaching full speed (more or less) by the time you get to speed step 10, roughly 1/4 throttle (Railmaster and eLink). I've gone in and noted all the CV values, then altered the speed step values and written them back to the decoder in an attempt to gain more fine control at slower speeds, but it made no difference and when I did a full CV read again, all the speed step values were back where they'd started.....? Strangely, the control is a lot finer when the loco is moving in reverse.... Anyone got any ideas please?

From my original post... Guys, let's get one thing clear here - I did NOT expect Hatton's to do anything about it after so many years, I fully accept it's my fault for not checking it when I got it, I just wanted them to be aware of what had happened (I paid for a new item but received a second-hand one), yet I was effectively called a liar! Why would I lie when I made them fully aware from the outset that I was keeping the loco and wasn't looking for any form of refund - having spent a lot of time getting it to run right and fitted sound to it? I did NOT expect them to "take action", I simply wanted them to acknowledge that a mix-up had occurred at some point, hopefully this would have allowed them to look at their own procedures to prevent anyone else having a similar issue.......

I currently have mixed views.... I've placed a lot of orders with Hatton's over the years and had no issues, but one thing I've been guilty of is buying locos and immediately putting them away into storage, for the day that I "get round to" building my layout.... Anyway, that day came recently, so once I had track down I started running locos. At this time, I discovered issues with Heljan's Class 14 and 17 models via the internet, so was wary of checking out those particular locos first. First, the Class 17, after finding this forum and reading up on the issues. Sure enough, tight wormshaft bearings on the drive towers causing high current drain, dismantled and resolved, all back together and sound installed, job done. Next, the 14.... opened the box, to find a loco with broken steps, headcodes cut from the sheet and already installed, glue marks on the body at the horn blocks and replacement etched cabside running numbers fitted! Oh, and it ran like a bag of bolts, with two pickups bent out of shape as well!! Not what I expected. Now, it's a number of years since I bought it, so I knew there was no question of any warranty, so I decided (with the help of info on this forum) to resolve the running issues myself. This I did, and now have a good running model, which I have installed sound into (with a degree of difficulty!). I decided I would email Hattons and touch base, explaining the situation, as this had actually been bought as a new item.... various emails later, people not wanting to believe me that I had bought it "new", someone else talking about "damage" when it was actually modifications, and a steadfast refusal to acknowledge that something had gone wrong their end.... at one point I was more or less called a liar by one of their staff, which really angered me! Sadly, I don't have the original purchase docs as it was an internet purchase that would have been saved on the hard drive of my previous computer, which went to the big silicon valley in the sky about 2 years ago, haha. I am absolutely convinced that I was accidentally sent someone else's returned item as a new one, by mistake. Lessons learned, 1. check everything on receipt. 2. print and keep paperwork. 3. don't trust a retailer just because they are big and have been around for a long time! This was my first ever occasion that I felt the need to contact Hatton's about anything I have ever purchased from them, and in all honestly it leaves a slightly bitter feeling towards buying from them again in the future!

Made a few orders for track over the last year or so - what I would class (financially, at any rate) as reasonable orders. All deliveries have been made in good time to the North of Scotland (Moray), so there's absolutely no complaints from me, only praise for a good service.

I was a "little" later Rob, 140 entry!

Cheers guys, yes everything I have checked so far has sound on F1 and lights, where fitted, on F0. RAFHAAA96, that's the problem Rob - it won't populate for some locos. I've done most today, just got a Bachmann Class 47 left to do now, hopefully have it done over the weekend. P.S. Rob, what entry were you? 96th??