irishthump

OK. Taking the Lais decoder first, I'm guessing you have front and back marker lights on F0? And do the lights at one end come stay on when you press F2 or F3?

Noel, Which decoder are you using in the 071/201? The Lais decoder seems to have the exact same manual as the Gaugemaster decoders which means they can be a bit limited when trying to map the lighting functions.

And sorry, which loco 201, 071?

Dave, What brand of decoder are you using? Those instructions were for the Loksound decoders.

Yep, I just got the email warning me that third party hosting would be disabled soon, so all future pics will be local copies. But I'm afraid I'm in no rush to update any of the other links.... Oh and Photobucket can kiss my **s!

Thanks Noel! Yes it runs better than I expected. The only gripe was that I wasn't able to rig the headlights to a different function on the decoder so I just settled for the marker/tail lights. I'd have to check which horn I used, but I plan to change the brake sound anyway as it sounds a bit naff!

That's what I thought myself DV! Did you get your own A Class finished?

Finally got the fibre optics fitted for the lights and installed the sound decoder, so it's all finished bar the weathering! Here's a quick video of it in action shunting a few bogie flats. As you can see the slow running is very good. The soundfile is actually an EMD 567 rather than the 645 that was fitted to the A class but I think it sounds pretty good, please let me know what you guys think.... [video=youtube;ih9y-3Lr-gc]

Ok, very nearly there! All glazing, buffers and detail parts have been attached, sound chip has been installed and is working fine but needs to have a suitable file loaded to it. I also attached steps to the bogies, these were made from repurposed HO caboose ladders. Here's some pics of 019 sitting on the tracks.... I had a bit of an issue with the lighting. Specifically, the Hornby PCB that I used is wired with a negative common as opposed to a positive. My homemade led boards were wired positive so they had to be scrapped. I installed the boards and soldered in the connections. To prevent light bleed I gave the boards and leds several coats of primer then drilled small holes in the top of each led, fibre optic strands will be fitted into the marker/tailights when all else is done! Here's a couple of pics of the chassis with the lights activated:

Not a hope...

And they won't be clogging up the f*cking M50 at rush hour, which is from 9am-7pm in this country!

Rail is the most efficient way to move freight. One 201 class loco might be pumping out a lot of diesel fumes but the amount of trucks needed to move the equivalent amount of tonnage would be far worse.

I have to agree. Body mount a draft box Kadee would be the ideal solution. I don't own any MM Cravens so I can't comment on the amount of work required to get the couple sitting at the right height but anything would be better than faffing around with NEM pockets!

Yeah Eoin, up to me tonsils but not in anything railway related unfortunately!

Thanks for the kind words, Sulzer!

Here's a shot of the finished chassis. More weight has been added in the form of steel plate which was fixed to the sides of the motor. I also installed a PCB from a Hornby class 56 to make it easier to install lighting. I just plan on having operating running lights at first, the PCB gives the option to add working headlights at a later date. For the lighting I made a small PCB for each end of the loco. The PCB's have micro leds soldered to them for the running lights. These were then cased inside styrene to help prevent light bleed, I plan to use fibre optic strands to illuminate the running lights when the rest of the loco is finished. Here's a quick shot of the interior of the body shell. I used styrene to build mounting points at each end for the Kadee couplers and the speaker was installed in the roof grill and sealed with black mastic sealant. The chassis seems to run great so far. I was initially worried about hauling power as it's significantly lighter than an MM 141 but when I tested it it hauled 5 MK3 coaches without a problem. Hopefully I'll have some more progress to report by the weekend!

Wow! I didn't realise how long it had been since my last update on my workbench but here goes... After almost 2 years the A class is nearing completion! Truth be told I did the basic paint job not long after my last post, but I only recently got around to applying Weshty's excellent decals. I still need to install the glazing and wipers, add the buffers, bogies and fuel tank detail and install the Loksound decoder.

Just had a listen to the videos on the site and the engine sounds are definitely the ones from ESU. My advice if you're planning on chipping a lot of locos is to by the Lokprogrammer. You can try all of these recordings yourself and just swap them out if you don't like them. I would imagine if PM goes to ESU for a sound decoder for the 121 (like he did with the 071 and 201) the sounds will be the same recordings. The tired and overhauled engine options are also easily done. There is an option to increase the playback speed of the file by small increments which raises or lowers the pitch of the engine sound.

Yeah I use a mixture of 12 and 16 cylinder recordings in my own locos. The number of cylinders won't make much difference to the sound though. As was said earlier it's mainly down to the higher revs of the 645.

That's no excuse Fran! I've been playing drums for over 25 years and at this stage I'm deafer than most and even I can hear it!

I assume Wheeltappers are using the recordings from the ESU website. The number of different US outline soundfiles has ballooned over the last few months. They have several versions of the 567, 645 and 710 engines. They even recently added a 567 fitted with the 645 power assembly.

Maybe I watch to too many Youtube videos of the different locos (a disctinct possibility!) but I notice a marked difference between the 567 and 645. There is also a subtle difference between the original 567 and the ones overhauled with the 645 power assemblies. Hard to spot, but it is there.

You might try looking at American HO locos. Although I don't have the dimensions to hand, I think something like an F Unit chassis might be a good fit for the C Class.

Jaysuz, Dave! I hope you get on the mend soon, man....

Noel, As I said to you before Full Throttle has both coasting and braking features. The coasting feature is activated by pressing a function key which drops the engine sound to idle while still allowing the engine speed to be controlled by the throttle. The brake function can also be assigned to a function key, when activated it brings the loco to a stop at half of the loco's programmed momentum value. If you don't have these on your loco then the supplier, for whatever reason, has decided not to activate them.