SRman

No, the two car sets in blue went into blue and grey all right, but were augmented to become the class 204 3T units at the same time, using the demoted ex-EMU driving trailers from four of the disbanded 'tadpole' class 206 units. Hence there is little to no evidence of any 2-car blue/grey units. I suspect quite a few people on here are scouring their slide and photo collections to find such a picture to send on to Kernow. It would be nice if someone can succeed in this.

Not a class 37, but a belated photo to show what we mean by using Blu-Tack (or similar) to create an enclosure under a speaker. This one is a class 25 chassis belonging to P.C.M. that we use to transfer sounds onto LokSound decoders (it currently has class 47/4 sounds installed!). As you can see, I have simply piled 'sausages' of Blu-Tack around the edges to form a complete air chamber between the speaker edges and the chassis block. While this works for many of Bachmanns older sound locomotives, I wasn't aware of the latest trend to attach the speaker inside the body shell under the fan, as illustrated earlier in the thread. Still, I hope this clarifies what I, and others here, have been referring to. Note that those blobs in the corners are sealing up the screw holes in the metal surrounds. The enclosure must be air-tight for the best effect.

No worries. It gave me the excuse to do Lord Nelson! I had been thinking I should do this one anyway and having done Lord Anson only a day or so before, I knew what to do and what traps to avoid. The whole thing took less than an hour to complete.

Hi Peter. Sorry, you were too quick. I posted the link before I had finished the blog entry. It should be up and working now.

I converted the second LN, no 850, Lord Nelson, and took photos this time. The step by step guide can be seen in my workbench blog here : http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/965/entry-15387-dcc-decoder-fitting-for-a-Bachmann-lord-nelson-split-chassis/.

In response to a request from Mallard60022, after fitting a decoder to a Bachmann Lord Nelson with split chassis, here is a step by step guide to how I did it, using my second LN as the example (I didn't take any photos for the first one!). This one is no. 850, Lord Nelson, renamed and renumbered from no. 864 Some of the photos are a bit blurred as I was trying to hold the model and operate the phone camera at the same time, but I think the results are sufficiently clear to show what I was doing or what I am talking about. To start with, remove the body from the chassis. This is retained by one screw under the cab and with a tab on the chassis slotting into the body under the smokebox at the front. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 3 cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 4 cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Next I removed the two remaining screws holding the chassis wheel keeper plate / spring and brake block detail (I'll refer to this as the base plate from here on), after springing out the brake rodding (note that I actually took the screws out before lifting the body off - this doesn't affect the process). Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 2 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr After this, I removed the cylinders, which are simply a force fit on metal extensions from the chassis. Then I levered the motion supports off; these are also simply a force fit, like the cylinders. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 5 cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 6 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr There are three screws holding the chassis halves together. One of them also holds the solder tags on to the front end of the chassis. Before we remove the base plate / axle retainer, I prefer to remove the front screw, pull out the plastic plug from the other side and release the two solder tags. I didn't do this on the first conversion and ended up breaking one of the wires coming up from the bogie. You might wish to mark which tag is on which side, perhaps with an ink marker pen. This will assist identification for reassembly and connection of the decoder wires later. If you have a later release LN from Bachmann, these tags may not be present as Bachmann quietly dropped the extra pickups from the specification. In that case, you may wish to add some brass or copper tags later when reassembling the chassis, to ease the job of connecting the decoder track wires. 44291315681_dcf79eb8b6_b.jpg Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 7 cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Now lever the front end of the base plate up, just behind the bogie, lifting it and moving it backwards slightly to unhook the rear part that hooks over the chassis end. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 7 cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 8 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr This leaves the wheels, axles and valve gear free to be lifted out of the chassis. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 9 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr The remaining two screws can be undone to allow the split chassis halves to be separated. Watch out for the plastic spacers: two white rectangular ones at the bottom and two black plastic washers around the upper two plastic plugs (that the screws go into). Also ensure you don't lose the plastic gear. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 10 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 11 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr I actually use a little black-tack (or mastic material) to retain the spacers in their places so they don't get lost and don't shift when reassembling the chassis. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 13 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr The motor just lifts out, but keep an eye on the two black plastic cup washers that go over the end bearings. Also, make sure the thrust bearing stays put (it is wedged into the chassis where the worm gear touches it). Note also that the motor has a small red spot marking the bottom which was connected to the right-hand chassis side - this brush will get the orange wire from the decoder. As an extra precaution, I chose to wrap the motor in insulating tape but this is not really necessary. Remove the two copper/brass (or whatever!) springs that bore on the brush tags. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 14 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 15 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Now prepare the decoder. This one is a TCS M1, which is very compact yet able to handle over 1 amp loads. These give reasonable running qualities at good prices and are covered by TCS' 'goof-proof' warranty, which means that if something goes wrong with this installation, they will replace it with no quibbles. I bared and tinned the grey and orange wires. Don't forget to thread on some heat-shrink tubing before soldering the wires to the motor brushes: orange to the red tagged brush, grey to the other one. Slide the heat-shrink tubes over the bare wire ends and brush tags and apply heat. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 16 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 17 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 18 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Now resite the motor in the chassis half. The decoder wires are only just long enough and are routed through the gap between chassis halves. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 19 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr The chassis halves can be reunited, ensuring all the plastic spacers are in place (a bit of black-tack stops them moving or dropping out during handling, as mentioned earlier). I replaced two of the screws but not the one at the smokebox end (yet). I did temporarily push the plastic plug into the smokebox end hole to align the spacer washer. Next I replaced the wheel sets in the chassis and clipped the motion supports and cylinders back in. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 20 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 21 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Next I clipped the base plate back in, hooking it onto the rear of the chassis first then sliding it up and pushing it home at the front, and replaced the two screws. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 22 cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Now for the final connections. I shortened the black and red wires from the decoder, stripped the ends and tinned them. Note that I have also cut short the function wires (white, yellow and blue - green and purple additionally if using a TCS M4 decoder as I did with Lord Anson) and "tied" them up with a section of heat-shrink tubing. If you are going to fit lights or firebox glows, or other extra functions, these are the wires you will need in addition - that's beyond the scope of this essay. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 23 cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Solder those red and black wires to the solder tags attached to the bogie pickup wires. Make sure you identify the right-hand wire (as you look from the back towards the front of the loco) and solder the red wire to that. The black wire goes to the left-hand tag. Now you can pull the black plug back out of the chassis at the smokebox end, insert it through the left-hand solder tag and then through the chassis. Insert the screw through the right-hand tag then screw it into the plug through the chassis. Finally, add a section of double-sided tape to stick the decoder to the very front of the chassis. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 24 cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Now test on the programming track. Mine read back properly so I reprogrammed the decoder to number 850, tweaked the inertia and momentum settings (CV3 = 20, CV4 = 15 as a starting point for my tastes - yours may be quite different), then gave it a track test. Again all was well, so it was back to the workbench to refit the body. Note: I also used the opportunity to lubricate the motor bearings and gears while everything was accessible earlier. Here is Lord Nelson hauling a test goods train under DCC control. Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 25 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Bachmann LN Decoder Fitting - 26 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr I hope this helps somebody and hasn't been too boring or laboured. Edit: I have had to reload all the images into Flickr after suspending my Photobucket account. I hope I have got the right photos in the right places.

I'll try to take photos with the next one - I still have a Southern malachite LN to do, one I renumbered and renamed to 850, Lord Nelson, himself. That means I can run it as a preserved example too.

It was all taken in the spirit it was intended, Brian. A little bit of fun between friends. I certainly don't intend any insult but I do like playing with accents and dialects. I'm not very good at it, but I still do it!!

Mind you, try Brian's printed post in a Welsh accent!

I know ... I wasn't at school long enough in Tintagel to pick up the accent / dialect properly!

Feeling pleased with myself, having finally converted a Bachmann Lord Nelson to DCC. 30861, Lord Anson, now sports a TCS M4 decoder, mounted just in front of the chassis block. I was able to use the solder pads on the front to connect the red and black wires, as this one is an early release with extra pickups on the front bogie. It read straight away on the programming track, suggesting that I got it all right as far as insulating the split chassis halves and the motor brushes from each other. While this probably belongs in my workbench blog, I didn't pause to take any pictures of the conversion while the body was off or the chassis dismantled. Next time I remove the body I'll take a couple of photos to show how it was completed. The weathering was done when it was relatively new, a good many years ago now.

All this weird Cornish banter ... din't unnerstan' a word o' it!! Happy New Year, Rick. Keep up the excellent work and equally excellent photos for 2015. I'll look forward to another visit to Penhayle in due course - preferably when the weatehr has cooled off a bit. Good luck with the new job too.

A lighter moment at Newton Broadway: for a bit of fun, I posed a preservation running day. Here we have the Hornby rebuilt Merchant Navy 35005, Canadian Pacific, in BR blue (a livery that suits it well even though it only ever wore it in preservation, at least in its rebuilt form) passing Hornby P2 2001, Cock o' the North in LNER green.

Just had a look at the workbench thread. Some very nice stuff on there ... you have been busy! As an addendum to my entries, I have now landed three sets of Markits clack valves from Peter's Spares so I can redo the Z and the G16 properly and have a set spare.

A little while back, I bought a Hornby N15 that was missing its dome. A quick phone call to South Eastern Finecast secured one of their white metal N15 domes, which arrived well before Christmas. A few minutes' work with the drill and files on the N15 boiler cleared the area to allow the new dome to be glued in. Two coats of Humbrol HS 172 BR standard locomotive green (a very old tin of enamel from the old railway range of colours), including both the dome and the boiler segment between the bands has produced this, just awaiting a little weathering and toning down to blend it in properly. Progress has also continued with the Ayjay 4 SUB, with painting of the unit. All parts were given a coat of grey primer, followed by a coat of matt black on the underframes and bogies, and a pale metallic blue on the coach bodies - the latter because I needed a base coat before brush painting the special green I have for Southern Region EMUs (mixed up for me by Haymes Paints in Nunawading). The pale blue was used because my green spray can had gone off! I include a photo of one of the bodies in this colour just for curiosity value - does it look weird, or as a might-have-been (well, they did paint CC1 / 20001 in a pale silvery blue at one time)? The green is an acrylic but was not really formulated for painting models, so has to be applied in several thin coats. A few more coats are needed yet but the unit is starting to look like an SR/BR(S) electric. I ran it under test as a full four car unit and all works exactly as it should.

Llanbourne at rush hour! It's very busy. Superb pics of a superb layout, as always, Pete. Hope you and the Mantle clan had a lovely Christmas.

That settles it. I definitely want one of these! Time to save up for when they are released.

One minor correction, Rick. The class 71s weren't fitted with EP style jumpers so weren't able to multiple with the EMUs. Otherwise, a pretty good summary!

For wombat: I try to avoid soldering anywhere near the decoders if at all possible. My rule for extending speaker wires is to cut them in the middle, then solder in the new stretch of wire. This means I have to do two soldered joints instead of one for each wire, but as these joints are away from both the speaker and the decoder, there is litttle chance of damaging anything if I make a hash of it. If you get a 21-pin decoder with the speaker soldered to the contact pads, it is possible to retain that setup, as long as the wires are long enough to reach where you want the speaker to go - it may also require you to adapt clearances for those wires, such as filing small notches in the removable seat section on the 150 illustrated above. You would have to assess each job on its merits.

I wasn't sure what to do about adding couplings within the 4 SUB unit. The motor coach, using the Hornby 2 BIL chassis, already had NEM pockets; a rigidly attached one at the driving end and a swivelling one at the trailing end. I have a few of the NEM pockets, as marketed by Bachmann and Hornby, so thought I would experiment a bit with these. I filed a gap in the resin bogie ends and superglued the pockets in. I wasn't too worried about exact distances as I was going to experiment with different couplings to start with. As it was, I started with Hornby tension lock couplings but these held the coaches too far apart. Similarly with the Hornby close-couplers. The 2 BIL rigid couplings were too short, as well as being less practical for handling a four-car unit. Kadees seemed like the way to go. I have settled on combinations of #17 and #20 couplings to get reasonable coach spacing while allowing for my tight-ish curves. Once I have settled everything properly, I'll reinforce the pocket-bogie joints and cut off the dropper arms from the Kadees within the unit (no need for automatic uncoupling in a permanently formed EMU!). Edit to add video link and additional info: The NEM pockets superglued into the small recesses in the bogie frames seem to be a success, using Kadee #17 and # 20 couplings. I'll strengthen the joints with Araldite later. The reason I had to use the odd mix of Kadee sizes was because I needed to keep the coupler heads clear of the headstocks, and each type of coach has slightly different overhangs from the bogies. Here is a short video of the unit running temporarily as a three-car 3 SUB. http://vid98.photobucket.com/albums/l265/jslynn/Rail/3SUB%20test_zpssxckqxrl.mp4

I, and several others, made comments and comparisons in this forum regarding not just the size but also the positioning of those cab windscreens. That to me was the most glaring error as it affects the whole front aspect of the unit. The details and measurements given by at least one contributor were hardly subjective. Come on Hornby; I normally stick up for you but this one really takes the cake for the rubbish that statement is. That hasn't stopped me acquiring four of them, although none of mine were at full price, which made them more reasonable value for money. At full price I may not have tolerated the inaccuracies, at part-prices, I can live with them. I also want to get the new interiors to replace the existing ones. I fixed one coach using the first class compartments from an old Triang-Hornby composite coach interior but, unfortunately, I don't have any more of those knocking around.

Good luck with the N gauge one. The detail I could see in the website pics looked quite good. I'm not sure if it will be worth the extra effort of replacing the moulded on jumpers in that scale.

More details added to the fronts of the Ayjay 4 SUB. Lamp irons and windscreen wipers added, horns removed from the dummy motor coach but not yet from the motorised one. I must change the wire gauges used for the jumper cables. The ones I used match the resin moulded-on ones but they are really too coarse - I seem to recall I discovered this when I did the 2 HAL previously. I think most would agree the effect is still better than moulded-on detail though. EDIT: I decided I just had to fix the overscale jumper cables. The wire used originally for the centre cable is now the thickness used for the outer ones, while much thinner wire, from some multi-strand cable, was used for the centre one. I am now much happier with the effect.

School holidays for Christmas are here. I am hoping to get a bit more modelling done over the break, including getting the 4 SUB and 2 HAP completed, wiring and more tracklaying on the layout, and some weathering on more of the Hornby ex-SR units (2 BIL and 2 HAL). The first move on this has been to scrape and file off the moulded on pipes on the Ayjay 4 SUB and replace them with separate wire fittings. Next job is to add lamp irons, windscreen wipers (both of these items to be from selectively flattened wire), and handrails on the cab and guards' doors. I'll be cutting those roof-mounted horns off and leaving the whistle in place, as many SUBs still had their whistles in the late 1960s.

I have a Locomotives Illustrated about the LNER eight coupled types. The P2s feature, of course. There aren't a huge number of photos but most of those show teak Gresley corridor (gangwayed) coaches, although one shows non-gangwayed stock.