irishthump

Looks a bit long to me; too much space between the bogies....

 

Actually that one in the picture is too short - it's a bleedin' N gauge model!

They're all going to be compromises, but it would be better than a Railroad Deltic.

No argument there....

I have one and I'm not too impressed with it. I replaced the traction tyres with metal wheels so it now picks up power on all wheels, added a load of weight and it still would'nt pull the skin of a rice pudding!

Nope, it should fit just fine.

Looks a bit long to me; too much space between the bogies....

A 141/181 has four axels.

 

An A Class has 6 axels. Are people planning to put a cosmetic axel on either end of the MM chassis or is for a C class?

I was actually talking about the A class! I'd give a cosmetic axle a go with the Athearn chassis. You can pick them up handy (and cheaply) enough on Ebay and they can be made to run very well with a bit of work.

I certainly would'nt spend close to €100 on a 141 just to stick the chassis under a silverfox kit.

No, you'd have to sacrifice a 141...

To hell with that!

Theres always a slighly shortened athearn sd 9 chassis or take the bogies, drive shafts and motor out of a bachmann cl 55 and build a new chassis.

The F7 chassis is a good fit if you're not concerned about using a Bo-Bo. I've been dabbling with trying to fit Co-Co bogies to the chassis...

It's going to be difficult to fit the driveshafts but it certainly looks the part. You'd even get away with the fuel tank.

First of a couple of questions....

1) Does the loco run ok on DC or with a different decoder on DCC?

2) Have you tried resetting the decoder?

Interesting. All the MM 141/181s I bought new had black horns irrespective of the livery.

Same here.

The BEMF adjustments are limited on the Sapphire, but CV 150 has 2 settings to suit different motor types. CV 150 can be set to either 0 or 1 and if I remember correctly a value of 1 is for older motors. Might be worth a try....

But you have to bear in mind that this motor will never run as well as the MM locos. MM's are equipped with a good quality can motor and flywheels which improve slow running considerably, you will probably get the 58 motor running smoothly but it's slowest (reliable) speed will be higher than an MM. I would concentrate on getting the loco to run steadily at speed step 1.

The A's might have sounded different to other GM engined locos....... but it was a bloody marvellous sound

No arguement there!

Me too. A class never sounded as stirring nor impressive as the GM locos even though they ended up with with retro fitted GM diesels. Don't know if it was the different silencing arrangement or the different gen set that made the A class sound so different to 141/181 locos. If I had an A class model I don't think I would bother putting a sound chip on it for that reason, as well as the poor running old style chassis available for A's.

When I eventually get round to getting an A class kit I'll probably try and find an engine sound that resembles it on the ESU website. There would have to be something that would be close!

I agree they do have a number of Select versions for some of the V4 sound files, but not all of them, and not including the 071 and 201 sound files.

You're right there. The Select seems mainly aimed at US modellers.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to program a Select decoder with anything other than a sound program produced specifically for it.

Yes, they have the equivalent Select versions for each of the sound files. But I don't think you can alter specific sounds like horns or engine sounds with the Select versions.

It would be nailed on soundwise for an EMD 645 non turbo motor, I have one in a switcher and it sounds fabulous. However as you state the horn would be off and I always thought that A's sounded slightly different to other 645 non turbos due to the different silencing (or lack of!) arrangements and a different generator than normal EMD locos.

And I thought it was just me! I always thought the A's sounded more Sulzer-ish myself.... They just did'nt have that whine when notching up.

Seems to be a lot of money for an 'ish' engine sound, and probably totally wrong horn. A couple of years ago, I purchased a Loksound Select sound decoder on ebay from a shop in Atlanta. They offered to program it with any loco sound from the Loksound library. At that time no one was doing Irish sounds, so I went for an EMD GP39, which the library said was the same sound as an 071. Other sounds suitable for Irish locos are in the library, see link below. The Loksound Select decoder comes with a choice of horn sounds, all American, but at least one is similar to an Irish horn. The Select decoder is the same technology as the V4 decoder, except that the actual sounds are not editable, or replaceable. Function mapping is exactly the same as the V4.

The up side of all this is the price. At the time I paid £55, including shipping from the USA, just slightly more than half of what I would have paid in the UK for a V3.5.

 

http://www.esu.eu/en/downloads/sounds/

I recently splashed out on a Lokprogrammer myself and ESU have several engine sounds which are suitable for Irish diesels in the library of US sounds. I've programmed 3 V4 Loksounds for my Irish locos already. The Lokprogrammer also allows you to programme Loksound Selects with these files.

Nice neat conversion job, Billyboy.

What decoder did you use in the loco? Did you also connect the lights?

approx. 98 euros with possible import charges on it? think i'll stick with chips from this side of the pond.

Also available from Digitrains in the UK - http://www.digitrains.co.uk/ecommerce/search/827109-tsu-1000-sond-decoder-for-emd-645-non-turbo-diesels.aspx

The engine sound will be great, the Tsunami's are probably the best sounding decoders available, but you might find it hard to get the horn sound right. Tsunami's come preloaded with a selection of US horn sounds but none of them are really protoypical for Irish locos.

Thanks Graham, do you know of there is an easy way to do it using CVs or JMRI? I read the manual two months ago from cover to cover, but found the section on function mapping unclear.

Sorry, forgot to mention that I don't use JMRI myself but I've seen threads that say function remapping is quite simple with DecoderPro.

It's in the manual on page 56 but it uses indexed CV's. To be honest the real problem with the manual is the language used!

I tried searching the web before about this but to be honest nobody seems to have gotten their head around it and they all just suggest buying a Lokprogrammer!

Anyway, here's a screen capture from the Lokprogrammer software, the left box lists all the slots for the 071 file.

A delayed thank you BK. I had forgotten where this really useful answer was. I've read the manuals twice when you originally posted, but I find unless I summaries and write down these tips they get lost. Have been building laminated crib cards for useful CVs for LokSound, Zimo, Lenz and Bachmann. DCC seems to need extended and revised standard focusing on usability, interface and standards for use of functions given we are now in the sound era. 9 FN buttons simply isn't enough (e.g. manual notching on MM0071 sound chip is effectively unusable because it is FN 18 & 19).

I have to agree! That's why I move notching to keys 4and 5.

It's a breeze with the Lokprogrammer but to do it with CV's you need to know which soundslot controls each sound.

If you like I can give you a list of the soundslots, but you'll have to consult the manual for the actual remapping process.

Sorry Mods, can you move this to DCC section, I posted it in the wrong place!

Lads,

Here's a couple of short videos of a couple of Loksound decoders that I managed to get reprogrammed over the weekend.

Using the ESU Lokprogrammer I've programmed the decoders so that all 3 of my 141's have different sounding engines.

I programmed 161 using a sound file with a different version of the 567 engine. (These can all be downloaded from the ESU website).

This engine sounds like it might need a service!

182 has the 645 engine sound...

I think Health and Safety might have a word with that CIE employee hanging out of 182!

Thanks guys for the responses. I'm using a 4 function chip, so that may be the problem, i'll try F8 and see what happens. On the instructions in the MM box its says F3 and F4 are the respective cab lights.

Yeah that's the problem. The last 2 functions are the front and rear cab lights.

What decoder are you using? The 071 needs a decoder with 6 functions to make all of the lights work.

Just to let everyone know that after a brief discussion with "legomanbiffo" at Warley he intends to do new Irish recordings and sounds during 2015 for ESU Loksound. He was running some BR diesels at the show and I have got to say the Class 37 was brilliant. Here is a link to his Youtube channel to have a look. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfRnBPFj6tZV_XCRMJTq4BQ

Well that changes the game a bit! Legomanbiffo's sound projects are probably the best out there.