I decided to do this project for several reasons, the most important of which is that this locomotive is my daughter's and she wanted sound in it. I've heard sound in this identical loco at a show, so I knew it was possible, but I never talked to the guy about how he did it, what decoder he used, etc. But the biggest question was – could I do this myself?? Having just got into DCC in January 2010, I have only added drop-in decoders to locos, so going from that to a retro-fitting of an old loco (mine being first released in 1993), with sound, in N scale is quite a task for me!! I still consider myself a novice Model Railroader, though some would probably consider me at the intermediate level, I still have nagging doubts about my ability.

The first task was to determine what decoder and speaker combination I could cram into the shell. Obviously, milling the frame was a given. I carefully measured the obvious spots for a decoder and speaker and bought the TSU-750 Micro Tsunami decoder from Soundtraxx, along with a 1/2” speaker and enclosure kit. I actually bought several other speakers to test out, but this is the one I settled on as the best “bang for the buck” given the space limitations.  I also figured while I was at it, I'd change the white LED to a golden white LED and put in some Micro Trains couplers to finish off the package.

I had initially hoped that the decoder would fit on top of the frame at the back with some milling to the rear part of the frame, but once I had the decoder in hand, it was clear that wasn't going to happen. I could have put a larger speaker in the fuel tank had the decoder fit, but there was no way. Altering the plan, I test fit the decoder inside the fuel tank where it fit quite nicely and the 1/2” speaker was a perfect fit at the rear of the loco (with some milling). The bonus is the E8 shell has an opening in the rear door of the loco for the window without the plastic covering it – a perfect way for the sound to get out without drilling holes in the shell. Time to work the plan. The first photo shows all the parts before assembly.

First task is to remove the shell. Quite simple on this loco, just lift the ladders over the fuel tank slightly away from the body, and you can gently shake the frame out of the shell. With the shell removed, the next thing I decided to tackle was changing the white LED to a golden white LED. This particular loco has a light board already in place, so I just had to remove the old LED, set up the lightboard to be DCC friendly, and then put the new LED on. I found a PDF document online that Ron Bearden wrote on doing just this task, so I followed his instruction.

Removing the light board requires you to pull out a plastic clip that holds it in place. See below:

And when it is removed:

The first task I thought I'd try is removing the old LED. Solder wick in hand, I kept heating and wicking the solder on the LED leads until I got it all cleaned up and the old LED slipped out. I shortened the leads on the new LED slightly so they were the same length as the old one. I bent the ends over to fit back in the holes and soldered them onto the board. I'm very happy I've built so many Fast Tracks turnouts and read a lot of good posts on soldering on the MRH boards, as I've developed some pretty good soldering skills to do these tasks.

Next I removed the resistor in the middle of the board. This took a little doing and I wondered if this might be beyond my skill level, but with some patience and solder wick, I managed to get it off and more importantly, not lose it.  Work slowly and carefully so you don't melt anything you don't wan to.  With the resistor off, I filed two gaps in the circuit board – one that will be gapped with the resistor I removed. This modification allows the light to work off the decoder function rather than the track power running along the body-length pickup strips.  See below:

Finally, I carefully soldered the resistor over the center gap that I had cut. This was also tricky, but with some patience and the help of some tweezers, I got the resistor in place, and my lightboard work was complete. See below.

I have been very curious about the possibilites of this new decoder.

I have a N scale Bachman 2-8-0 I have been holding off on putting a decoder in until I can get sound into it. This may be the ticket..

Chris

 The lightboard was one of the easier tasks, but now its time to get down to business. Milling the frame of the loco to fit the decoder and speaker will likely be the biggest task in this project, so I began taking apart the loco. The lightboard had already been removed, so I removed the fuel tank by prying the four tabs up, two at a time, and slipping it off. Next, I removed the pickup strips that run the length of the loco on both sides and then pulled out the worm gears on both ends. The motor then slips out fairly easily and the trucks are removed with clips on the frame, similar to the fuel tank. I have to say I appreciate Kato's design and how things fit nicely but are still easy to take apart and put back together. Finally, I took a sharpie marker and marked up the area of the frame at the fuel tank to fit the decoder.

On to milling the frame. I bought myself a Dremel 9901 Tungsten Carbide Cutter, based on a post in the MRH forums. After a few minutes of futility, I thought there must be a better way. The metal in the frame is quite soft and it just kept gumming up the threads in the cutter, so I was constantly cleaning them out and getting very little cutting actually completed. Next, I tried a cutoff wheel, and while it was slightly better, it still was going to take a long time to complete the task at hand. I had recently purchased a Dremel accessory set on sale at a local home supplier and started digging through there to see what else might work. I came across a 1.5” metal EZ Lock cutoff wheel and thought I'd give it a shot.  Success. This was definitely the best tool for this particular job, but I had to work for about a minute and then let it sit for 5-10 minutes to let everything cool down. Not ideal, but workable.  See the 9901 Tungsten Carbide cutter and Metal EZ Lock Cutoff wheel below:

After milling out what I thought was enough space for the decoder, I tested the fit. Not quite enough in places, so kept at it and test fit again. It seemed to fit nicely, except two of the four clips of the fuel tank wouldn't latch onto the frame. So I kept at it. And at it. And a little more. And then some more, until I realized there was plenty of room for the decoder in the space. Puzzled, I tried flipping the fuel tank around, and sure enough, it fit perfectly! I milled out too much of the frame, but not an excessive amount. Once I completed this task, I cut in some grooves along the side and bottom edge of the frame to route the wires from the decoder up to the top of the motor. These grooves allow the shell to fit properly without the wires interfering or getting crushed. I also shaved out the end of the fuel tank (next to the rear truck) to allow the wires to get out of the fuel tank into the grooves so they aren't pinched at that point. With this cut out and the grooves cut into the frame at the bottom edge and sides, I test fit the decoder and wires, routing them through the grooves and then put the shell on and they fit perfectly.  See the final milling and test fit of the decoder in the fuel tank, as well as the ends cut out of the fuel tank.

Next, the frame at the back of the loco needed to be milled out to fit the speaker and housing. I measured it up and marked it again with the sharpie marker and got out the Dremel. I'll mention at this point that one of my job tasks is preaching safety and reducing accidents in our workplace. With this in mind, when doing the milling I made sure to wear pants, long sleeve shirt and work gloves, as well as a full face shield, dust mask and I went the extra mile and put safety glasses under the face shield. I've seen several accidents where something came in under the faceshield and still got in the eyes, so I thought I'd take the extra precaution. After the task was completed and I saw a little bit of dust on my safety glasses, I was glad I took this extra precaution. Fine metal shards in your eye is not a pleasant feeling but I digress.  See the markup of the speaker area:

Before milling out the speaker area, I put the enclosure together with a bit of plastic cement.  I didn't have room to add more space to the back of the enclosure (the kit comes with spacers to add length to the back of the speaker to give it better sound), so its just two pieces put together and the speaker fits in the front.  Here is the enclosure together with the speaker:

I completed milling the area for the speaker enclosure and test fit with the shell. It didn't quite fit, so I had to mill just a bit more until it did. The biggest task complete! I am concerned how much pulling power I took away by removing this much of the frame, but I plan no more than 6 passenger cars to be pulled by this loco, so it should still be enough to do so. Unfortunately, I figure I did remove about 20% of the frame in this process – always a potential problem, but even more so in N scale.  Below is the milling complete with the speaker enclosure in place.

Next up will be changing the couplers to Micro Trains knuckle couplers.

but my assumption was always that the steam sounds were better than the diesel sounds, and the sound I got out of this little decoder and tiny speaker was much more than I was expecting.  You might be able to get an even larger speaker in your steamer that would make it sound even better.   

While waiting for the frame to cool between cuts, I thought I'd check out the couplers and see what it was going to take for me to get these changed out. I ended up alternating between these two tasks, working on the milling, then working on the couplers while the frame and cutting wheel were cooling. The couplers were the most frustrating task of this whole project. I kept picturing a couple engineers at MicroTrains laughing while writing the instructions for putting together these tiny little things. “Wait, no, put in the instruction 'it should slip right into place' like it actually will!!! HA HA HA!!! I wish I could watch people doing this!! HA HA!!” I was fortunate the kids were busy during this exercise, or I'd have filled the swear jar a couple times over. Needless to say, though, I did finish it by following the instructions from MicroTrains.

The easiest one to do was the Pilot assembly, so I started with that. Not having the recommended jig, I was forced to improvise. I cut the pieces off the sprue and cleaned them up, then I burnished the inner surfaces of the draft gear box with Greas'em. Using my fat fingers, I put the lip shank into the draft gear box and then slipped the knuckle shank over top. Surprisingly, I managed to get the trip pin into the two shanks without too much problem. Then the tough part came. Those darn microscopic springs. This is where the swear jar missed out because nobody could hear me.  Here is what it looks like before removing the pilot box:

And here it is when its removed (the new coupler is shown):

I got out a large box to work in to catch any stray springs or pieces I dropped so they could easily be retrieved. After about fifteen minutes of “sproings” and picking up the spring, I got it into the spring slot using an X-acto knife and slipped the draft gear lid on. Then the draft gear lid popped off and “sproing” - we were back to square one. Another twenty minutes passed before I got back to this stage. This time, I had put the draft gear box on some flat tweezers and when I slipped the lid on, I closed the tweezers to hold it together. Then I heated up my soldering iron and gently melted the top to the sides of the gear box. And thankfully it stayed together and worked. I then removed the pilot from the shell by pulling out the brass clip and gently prying up the draft gear clip until it came off. I removed the old coupler and slid the new draft gear box into place, replaced the draft gear clip and the brass clip that held it all together.  Worked like a charm.  Above is a picture of the coupler pocket ready to go into the pilot hole.  The brass strip holds it all in place after insertion.  Here is what it looks like from the front:

And a close up:

The rear coupler is mounted on the truck, and this was where I was really happy nobody was around. Removing the old coupler wasn't too challenging, I just needed to twist out the old one and then trim the centering spring post that was in the truck to 1/16” according to the instructions. Well, I broke the centering post off which I wasn't sure if this was a problem or not. Might have been. I put the lip shank and knuckle shank together with the trip pin again without much difficulty and then slipped it into the truck. Next, I had to put a spring into the #1128 adapter pocket and slip it into the draft gear housing on the truck and line up the shanks together to slip into the centering spring. In Human Performance, this is what we call a ELS – an Error Likely Situation. Too many steps in one, all ripe for error. And error I did.  Here is what it looks like apart with the pieces to make the new coupler:

And here is where the centering post broke off that should have held the pocket in place better if it was just trimmed.

At one point I was certain I would never get this into place and if I didn't break that centering spring post, I'd perhaps have put the old coupler back on. I could get the adapter in, but it would not stay in place and the shanks wouldn't stay. I came to the realization that I need to work something into the place where the centering spring post was to secure it better. I took another draft gear lid and cut it to fit behind the adapter in the truck so it wouldn't slip back further into the truck. I got it into place and used the soldering iron to give just enough heat to melt it into place without damaging the truck. From there, it only took a couple tries to get it seated properly. It still had some slop, though, so I took some epoxy and glued it in place. Finally, the couplers were complete and my sanity could be restored.  Here is the final view of the truck and coupler:

You can see one of the reasons this article wouldn't make it for submission - I need a camera I can adjust the settings on to get better depth of field.  I got better with lighting, but still would help to have a better camera to work with the lighting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaSha-tJEGU

DC Snr.

That little N scale steamer sounds pretty good. 

A forum thread where they discuss the installations can be found here:

Has-anyone-installed-a-decoder-with-sound-in-their-Bachmann-2-8-0

Regards,

Chris

 At this point, when I was cursing at the trucks, I noticed some fine particles in the gears of the trucks and then saw the same on the worm gears. After posting my problem in the MRH forum, I took some soap and water and an old toothbrush and scrubbed the gears and left them to dry. Before I put the loco back together to start the wiring, I added a touch of synthetic automatic transmission fluid to all the gears as recommended by many people. The trucks rolled smoothly on their own, so I hope this will make this loco even smoother than it was prior. With the lubing done, it was time to put the loco back together for the final wiring of the decoder. Here are all the pieces ready for assembly:

This is a pretty simple process and starts with putting the trucks back on by simply slipping the mounting loops over the clips on the frame. Next, drop the motor back into place and then put the connector from the worm gears into the motor and press the worm gears into their mounts over the trucks. After those fiddly couplers, this was a walk in the park. With these in place, replace the plastic covers over the worm gears, ensuring the truck pickup strips slip into the appropriate slot in the covers. Only the pickup strips that run along between the trucks and the lightboard to put on yet. But first, a little Kapton tape is needed on the pickup strips under the motor leads to isolate the motor from the wheels and frame. The motor itself is already in a plastic housing, making it fairly simple to isolate it. Here's a shot of where I put the Kapton tape:

Now we just need to attach the wires to the correct locations and put it all together.  I'll show all this next week when I get time to take some more photos and a video to "show" what it sounds like.