The Brute Gets Her Voice Back

 This time the ESU sound decoder installation went perfectly. Instead of sending the old one back in right away, John opted to buy a brand new one and have the sound profile loaded into it. I bought a new speaker just to be on the safe side, and when the decoder went in it worked perfectly and sounded great.

Reducing the flanges did make for some problems on my tight radius layout while trying to program it, though. When the loco goes into a curve it tends to derail the idler (un-powered inner) wheel set on the rear truck, and in a left hand curve the wheel touches the truck frame and shorts out. The wheels derail in a right hand curve, too, but they don't short out. This was not a problem with the plastic wheels, of course.

I didn't notice this problem on the large radius NTRAK layout at NRV, but when I tried to run it on Kato Unitrack 348 radius curves when programming the speed it jumped and shorted at speeds greater than about 45 smph. That means it will probably do the same on the 315mm radius T-TRAK curves. I really hope we won't have to reinstall the plastic wheels because the metal ones just look so much better. I may end up having to reduce the truck frames on that side of the loco to prevent the problem, or maybe I can cut a disk of very thin styrene to put on the insides of the wheels.

But that is an issue for another day.

The Brute Gets It's Voice Ba...oops...

I took possession of the Brute last weekend to re-install it's sound decoder.

But first, I installed the newly turned-down wheelsets and ran it around the NTRAK layout at the NRV show that I was telling you about in my last post. It ran pretty good, but in one corner it was hanging up at the junction between modules. The corner module was off level by just enough to cause a hump between it and the next module, and the Brute being as long as it is would high-center on that hump.

After the show ended on Saturday one of the other club members and I leveled that corner out, and Sunday she ran all day at the head of a string of Tropicana reefer cars. Not quite 560 of them, though, so she didn't even break a sweat.

After the show she came home with me, and Monday morning she went on the bench. Everything went swimmingly until I put it on the track to test it out. It sounded horrible! The volume was way too low and when I turned the volume up to full everything was garbled. When I pulled up on the speaker to check the connections, one of them shorted against the frame, and now the decoder is dead again.

I am tempted to say this was the problem all along, especially since I have looked everything over and I can't see any way that suspect weight could have moved forward enough to touch the motor leads. I am reliably informed that this happened in Altoona though, so I guess that was a problem. The center weight over the motor had been removed when the Digitrax decoder was installed, so that may have allowed just enough movement to let it happen.

At any rate, the DZ126 is back in place, the motor leads have been insulated with some shrink tubing, the weight over the motor has been reinstalled, and the Brute is back to silent running. I have so informed Mr. President, and instead of sending the re-fried decoder back to ESU he is just going to procure a new one, along with a new speaker.

I did manage to get the rear handrail stanchions replaced, though. When I put them on originally I had installed them with super glue, and when I got the loco on Saturday I found that three of the four of them were missing. So, when I was done with the decoders, I cut three replacement stanchions off of the Gold Medal Models fret and installed them. 

I soldered them in this time, including the one that had managed to stay on. It's the first time I have ever soldered brass locomotive parts together, and it came out looking pretty good. I'm pretty sure they are on there to stay now. I'll try my hand at soldering brass Nn3 cabs next.

At least that went right.