Now working on a first gen Kato SD40-2. Using the ESU 58823 sound decoder. So this frame is a bit different than the later models from kato that came out in the mid-late 90s which I have two of. Originally I was going to put the speaker in the tank but then this left the issue with the decoder as most of the shell is too narrow to accommodate the width of the board except in the center. This frame is actually better for center placement because the sides around the motor are solid so hacking off the top won't risk the structural rigidity of the frame. Here you can see my marks where I cut out the frame. Rear cutout is for the speaker. There is a plastic mount inside the frame that holds the motor which had to be modified to take advantage of the full depth of the cuts I made. There is a center rail top and bottom that connects the two ends of the mount. I had to cut the top rail out so that the decoder rests directly on the motor to get the clearance in the shell. I also had to mill out the roof of the shell to get clearance were the decoder plug snaps into the main board. I will be lighting the number boards separately from the tail/headlamps so there will be a bit of hacking up of the lenses to get that working right. I will reuse the front lighting board as both a voltage bus for all the lights. I also want to add a roof beacon so have parts on order to make that happen.
I was wondering if it would be worthwhile to add rail sounds like the "clackety-clack" to one of the passenger cars of my Kato Silver Streak set. Has anyone done this? It would mean 2 decoders for one set of trains. Could it also respond to the throttle to change the speed of the track sounds?
Sound only decoders exist, you could give it the same address as your non sound decoder and that way it would know when the throttle was going up etc. https://www.modelrectifier.com/v/vspfiles/resources/dcc/0001866 diesel sound only sounder.pdf Honestly I would just redo the Silver Streak engine with a sound decoder. It's a pretty easy install. Someone smarter than me would have to tell you how to make a click clack faster with the throttle setting but I'm sure you can.
Almost done with the BN 1976 SD-40. I decided not to wait for the roof beacon as it's been over two months since I requested a couple and have yet to hear anything besides an initial follow-up. Instead I bought some 2mm tower head LEDs but am actually only using the tower portion without the lit part which is almost perfect for what I am trying to accomplish. I cut off the tower to the length I wanted then drilled out with a 1mm bit to accommodate the pico led that currently protrudes through the roof of the loco. When I'm ready to affix to the loco I'll fill with UV cement, place over light then cure it with the light inside. To get this all wired with room was a bit tricky because the light pipes for the headlight run right up to the bottom of the roof where the beacon wires need to feed through. Unfortunately all I had for amber pico lights came with thicker 34awg wire so I had to scrape out a channel to get them ran so they wouldn't interfere with the light pipe. If they used the thinner magnet wire this would have been a non-issue. Then after separating the headlamp portion of the piping from the number boards I busted one of the lenses to the headlight off... gah! Actually I wound up discarding the entire headlamp portion and just filled the headlamp holes in the roof with bondic, cured then came in behind with a pico LED and glued that facing forward on the inside of the roof. Worked out very nicely with ample lighting on both the upper and lower lights. Blacked out the inside with paint, installed the light boards and done. It was actually much more of a PITA as there was a few different things I tried to get to this final product. This kind of shows how I cut up the front light piping so the number boards are completely separated from the center section for the headlamp. I use the original light on the front PCB board to still illuminate the number boards using aux1 from the decoder. I also cut away the windshield and painted the edge that I cut so less light would get transmitted to it from either the headlight LED or the number boards. That black spot is where I painted behind the headlamp after I glued it to the roof just behind the headlamp holes with UV glue. This prevents that light from leaking over to the number boards or into the cab area when it's lit. Waiting for blackout paint to dry (there was like leakage from the headlight up through the hole for the beacon light) before I place the beacon cover on but almost there.
