Alterstone_ngauge

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 ;

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.

Sound with full size sugar cube speaker (15x11x9) / Stay alive with 1410uf of backup / Close coupled tender solutions fo Ivatt 2mt video; https://youtu.be/soLCXReMkzQ

Thank you. Getting there now... can’t believe I pulled it off haha. Thanks!

finished all work on my Ivatt, 4mt 2-6-0 and WD Austerity this weekend.

New railing thing sorted

Made Some good progress as it slowly starts to resemble a model

Finally weathered my A3 and Black 5

This the best compliment ever cheers Graham! Exactly what I like, and what I’m trying to nail!

hey this is the product https://tramfabriek.nl/Dapol-a4.html You don’t need anything, just pull the plastic off your existing shaft and stick it on the new one. Already has a brass adapter so the diameter is correct.

More scenery

by the way, you need to replace the motor in order to create space for the capacitors. tramfabriek is the Brand. It’s a much better motor and much smaller

I can’t but if it helps you just connect a zimo SACC16 pcb to the mx648 via the common positive and ground on the decoder. Then you connect the capacitors to that board. It’s in the instructions of the decoder and mx648. Hope that helps. Dan

here is some Christmas action https://youtu.be/Ry3MduLvR5A

finished product

My 12 year old 9f had a motor, sound and stay alive upgrade.

Me too haha

Thanks. It’s going to be good when I bring it all together with the airbrush. Very in your face at the moment, and with no details added the 2mts are both Farish in my collection and they run perfectly to be honest with no detailing !

Mirrors gone up for operator feedback. Works well.

wiring up my station lights so I can make progress with the ballasting

Just completed this sound conversion for massive stay alive and sound. I have since painted the wires black. I hate tinny sounds and stalling n gauge locos so I decided the permanently coupled wagons made for a cool compromise. The 08 had just been sitting in a box for 5 years stuck in a DC only state anyway.... goes on my layout nicely

self congratulatory hard and fast progress post.

Proud to finally have an amazing lighting setup so I can actually see my layout...

Duchess's