Tonight I swapped the battery decoder in Osceola (with the incongruous diesel sound system) for a Tsunami T-1000 steam decoder with a current keeper. I also swapped the large speaker with a tiny sugar cube speaker. This had the effect of reducing dead weight in the tender as the battery and speaker did weigh a few ounces. In accordance with Dave Schneider's suggestion (he is the manufacturer of the locomotive model), I removed all the weights I added to the engine. He suggested Bullfrog Snot for traction tires too, but I had already added traction tires to the port side drivers.
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| Soundtraxx Sugar Cube speaker |
It is now running very nicely. The current keeper prevents any electrical stalls and sound drops. The natural balance of the engine is good and it doesn't suffer from curve drag as much as when it was loaded with the extra weights. It still has some trouble with the grades, but that is OK. It can run the mainline with 5 cars, with a running start on the grades. It should be able to handle 6 cars on the flats.
It is not necessarily a bad thing to have engines on the roster with different tractive effort. It will keep the yard and engine masters on their toes.
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| Wood piles compared |
The sugar cube speaker sounds quite good too, almost as good as the QSI HB speaker in Haupt. With the tiny sugar cube speaker and the smaller decoder hidden in the walls of the tender, the installation in Osceola is practically invisible. No need for a huge wood pile to hide electronics.
All in all I am glad I added Osceola to the roster. It's great looking model and it does run very well. We O scalers are lucky that SMR produced these locos.
I also put a second T1300 throttle in service. Just a few more DCC tasks to add some boosters to zones and I'll be back to laying track.
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