Graham Radish

Welcome,

What you are planning to do is a great idea, i used to live in Stoke-on-Trent and there was a steelworks there, "British Steel - Shelton Works"

I used to work there years ago (about 1990) with petrol strimmers cleaning up the tracks etc, there were several shunters going up and down all the time, the track is about a mile long.

I used to go camping just outside Shelton regularly in a town called "Sneyd green" which is where i was born, i have great memories of hearing the loud roars of the steel being formed late at night in the machines, you could hear it miles away.

Doing a steelworks is a great idea as a first railway, you will have fun with this.

Now the bodywork,

This is the first time I've ever fitted waterslide transfers to a loco so here goes, i'm halfway through doing one side, the Bachmann printed decals came off with my fingernail really easy as expected.

Just done the 'Colas' and 'Rail' decals nearly done one side then on to the other, i've applied them with an 80/20 mix of water and PVA to strengthen the bond to make sure this never happens again.

Once all the decals have been done the main body will be getting a coat of gloss varnish and any areas like windows that need to be masked will be masked with humbrol maskol. when the sides are done the roof will be getting a light coat of varnish thats in between matt and satin in sheen, light coat of sleeper grime on the bogies and some black wash here and there to bring out the details, obviously the black wash will have to be done first.

Well back on to the lighting, i thought it was all done but there's an annoying issue with the directional marker lights, they're too bright! and were overpowering the main high beam, so i removed both ends of the body and rectified the problem.

Here you will need to replace 2x 0805 SMD resistors at either end, i have marked the image i took to show you which ones to replace, the factory fitted ones were only 1.5K Ohm this results in the marker lights being blindingly bright and this is not prototypical at all, the main white beam supposed to be much brighter, anyway the problem is now solved, once done simply use a good glue for plastics to fit the ends back in place. do NOT use superglue! 

Right I've changed one side of the cab, more appropriate now i think.

No andi i'm glad you told me this! My driver is fitted to the side where the fan is, i take it then this side is where the engine door compartment should be?

Thanks for letting me know, a great help. i think i have some satin baby blue acrylic in stock.

Cool, wonder if the colas interior would be this colour at the back?

Here you can see that I've also fitted a piece of this PC fan filter mesh to the top of the speaker, these speaker drivers are delicate and this prevents any damage to them, the silicone i used was a tube left over from when i did some work on my bathroom. its "Bond It WP70" it doesn't smell or make a mess like the old silicone sealant, in fact it smells quite pleasant -  it's amazing stuff for metals and plastics and you can get it in about 8 different colours. Of course i could have used black tack but i wanted a more permanent solution.

The sound from the loco now is great, very throaty with good bass and no vibration, im still amazed how much sound these little speakers throw out and with them being so small they're my no.1 choice now for small spaces, they are epic. I wish i could say the same thing about my DCC concepts rolling road though, to be honest it aint great.

With an ultrafine 0.5mm tip marker i've picked out the raised details

The 680uF low esr capacitor is fitted along with the diode and 100Ohm resistor. At the side of the speaker is a piece of plastic i had lying around out of an old airfix kit to tidy things up. A 680uF capacitor is ideal as it provides excellent power continuity with perfect running without having inaccurate running in train controller. And as i mentioned previously the CAB switch now turns the stay-alive off and on.

I've already done all the lighting, now it's on to the sound. As i mentioned the square enclosure type sugar cube speakers sound amazing for their size, Roads and Rails sell these pretty cheap and they are guaranteed to fit all Bachmann 37's without cutting up your model, however there is a simple mod you can do to this speaker to make it sound even better and gives  a few more Hz in the bass response, this is simply done by taking the back off the speaker carefully, then fit the speaker to its designed area with silicone sealant, the surface area of the back of the speaker is now greatly increased, unscrew the PCB for the cab light so you have access to all angles of the speaker, run a bead of silicone around the edges of the speaker box and gently drop it in to place then leave for a good hour before continuing to the next step.

After an hour or so mask off any edges best you can then apply another thin layer of silicone to the joints on the chassis to make sure the speaker is completely air tight, silicone serves 2 purposes, one to stop any air leaks and secondly it provides excellent sound dampening to stop any vibrations that may occur, after this mod is done this little speaker will sound even better as the chassis is acting as a speaker box extension this nearly doubles the surface area of the enclosure without adding any height to the speaker at all.

Note, make sure all your wiring is done properly before you do this, since i have no intentions of ever removing the speaker or the decoder this is not a problem for me.
In this picture you can see that i removed all the PCB components as they serve no purpose on DCC but ive kept all the parts anyway in a little plastic bag and put it in the models box.

Wow thats proper nice, great work 

Doing this will enable you to run much less tight corners: