Back at the Dexter Lake DCC Club

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.

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.

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.

Testing Liquid Traction Tires on Osceola

I did some testing of Osceola tonight after the Bullfrog Snot traction tires cured overnight. I also added about 4 ounces of lead weight evenly distributed over the drivers with half in the cab and half in the boiler.

 The good news is that the pulling power did increase. It was able to pull 7 cars on the level track. It may even be able to do 8. However, curve drag and grades still take their toll. Curve drag especially seems to have an effect.

An effective working train length for this engine over  the whole layout would be more like 4 cars. Note that the overall design train length is 7 cars due to siding lengths. If I relegate Osceola to Aquia Landing as a yard switcher, it might be able to do the job switching 6 or 7 cars on the flat lands.

I made a short video in a silent film style. Since the locomotive still has a diesel decoder, there was no sense listening to that.

What do you think? It is a neat looking locomotive. Watch the valve gear "operate" as it moves.

On a whim I tried to double head it with another engine and I learned that doesn't work. I forgot that these are brass engines. The tender frames have opposite electrical polarity from the engines. So using the metal front link causes a short.

I will test again when the new decoder, speaker and tungsten weights arrive.

Bullfrog Snot

When I took delivery of the Osceola, I noted the box that the engine came in contained a bottle of Bullfrog Snot, a liquid traction tire product. I don't recall if there were any directions with the locomotive suggesting that I use it, so I set it aside and forgot about it.

Tonight, I recalled that I had it. I applied it to the port side drivers of the Osceola. These drivers don't pick-up track power, so having a insulted traction tire would not hurt performance.

After letting it cure for a couple hours, I did a test. The loco does pull much better. I was able to pull 6 cars in a brief test. I will let the rubber material cure overnight before doing more thorough tests.

I also ordered a set of tungsten weights. There is room in the boiler and firebox for several ounces of weight. Hopefully that will help too.

While I was in a spending mood I ordered a steam decoder for Osceola, some Soundtraxx Current Keepers and speakers. I will retrofit a  Current Keeper to Haupt. I also plan to swap the Stanton Battery in Osceola for a Tsunami T1000 with a Current Keeper. This will reduce the dead weight in the tender, which may help with pulling power. I will keep the Stanton parts as spares.

Finally, I tinkered with track plan version 13. In this version I added a peninsula between Falmouth and Stonemans. This addition adds about 16 feet of main line run at the expense of losing my crew lounge. It would create a better isolation of Falmouth from the rest of the layout and add some open country running, but I think the loss of the crew lounge is too much. I know CINCHOUSE would not like this.

A Tale of Two Locos

Tsunami installed with speaker before I cut down tender 

Today I added a Tsunami T1000 sound decoder to engine Haupt. It previously had a cheap Digitrax decoder without sound. So it was a fairly simple matter to swap the decoder. The trick was finding space for the speaker. I liked the sound of the QSI 1.06 inch HB speaker I had on hand. To fit it in the tender, I cut away part of the brass front wall of the tender. Then I made a styrene enclosure for the wood pile core.  I drilled out a series of holes in the front and top of the box to enhance sound transmission. Then I painted it black.

New wood pile core

Once it was installed on the tender with the speaker snugly fit inside, I added small pieces of cut twigs to build a wood pile. The wood pile is a bit big, but I need the box to cover the entire DCC assembly.   With the decoder Haupt can easily pull 10 cars. But the design train length for now is 6 cars due to the sidings at Falmouth. I could run more, but the curved turnout at Falmouth is just not reliable enough to use in op sessions with longer trains. I actually plan to get rid of it.

With the Haupt conversion to sound, all five locos are now equipped with  DCC and sound, though one is a diesel! I am not sure it's worth fixing that one. Maybe once it gets a steam decoder it will stop being a confused little snowflake and start pulling some cars. Oh well.

Adding wood to the painted core

While I was testing the locos, I also did a little tweaking of track and switch stands. The humidity changes usually causes problems and it takes a bit of tweaking to get it to operate reliably.

I made a short video summarizing the installs. I should note that in the video I stated that Haupt had a stock pick-up. That is not correct. Several years ago I added all wheel pick up to the tender. I forgot I did that even though I also documented the process in this blog post.  Tonight I saw the pickups while working on the tender.  That helps it run better, with just an occasional stall. But it really sounds good, at least to my hard of hearing ears. I ordered a Soundtraxx "Current Keeper" to prevent stalls. It looks like an easy retrofit. I'll post results when I get it installed.

Now it's on to track and freight cars.

Osceola has a split personality

The complete Aquia Line locomotive fleet - soon to be all sound and DCC equipped.

The new year is starting with a wimper. Alicia and I are still suffering from nasty colds. This has been day 15 for me. In order to salvage something from the day, I decided to install a Stanton Battery DCC system in engine Osceola. This is the newest SMR locomotive I have. It is the only one in my fleet that has the motor and gear box in the boiler. It is also a very small locomotive. 

Planning the installation

If you recall, the Stanton Battery System has 5 main pieces. The first is the decoder, a standard Tsunami decoder that has been modified by NWSL (the Stanton distributor) to include a radio receiver. The two systems are housed in a single piece of heat shrink insulation. This is too wide for the boiler

There is also a LiPo battery and an additional circuit card for the Battery Power Supply (BPS). The BPS takes care of charging the battery safely and providing clean power to the decoder. The final component is a speaker. 

Since the boiler tube on this loco is too small to house the decoder and radio subassembly, I decided to put all the electronics in the tender. The battery just fit in the back of the tender. The BPS and radio/decoder will go in the opening for the wood pile. I'll put the speaker in the wood pile also. Unfortunately, I don't have a small speaker on hand, so I will use a temporary speaker for now. 

This loco was a bit tricky to disassemble, but after about an hour I had it sufficiently apart to start the installation. I removed the existing wiring harness and created a new one. There is one pick-up wire from the port side pilot truck. The starboard side of the loco is shorted to the frame and the wheels on that side are the starboard pick ups. 

All wires connected

The tender has pickups on the port side only and they short  to the tender frame. This means if the metal drawbar touches the tender frame, the loco shorts. All of the SMR locos I have do this. It can be a problem is the insulation on the tender drawbar post comes loose, which it often does when handling the locos. I use glue to hold the insulation in place, but a plastic drawbar would also solve the issue.

Once I had the track power wires routed to the tender, I ran two output wires from the decoder to the motor. I also ran two wires to the headlight.  These go though black heat shrink insulation to create a protective harness. I did not use plugs. The plugs are a pain in the petunias when you handle the locos. This loco will be hard wired.

I then used electrical tape to wrap the remaining wires into bundles and got it all crammed into the tender.  The BPS and radio/decoder are in the wood pile opening  and are easily accessible for maintenance. This is going to prove very useful in a few paragraphs.

Then I got the loco reassembled. I had to solder back some of the fine detail that broke during disassembly. But the nice thing about brass is that it is usually easy to fix and repairs can be strong. 

A quick test run without a speaker showed that all was wired correctly and it ran. The radio location creates a strong reception. I can control the loco from the far side of the basement.

I hooked up a spare speaker I had on hand and was surprised to hear the sounds of a diesel. I checked the paper work that came with the decoder, and sure enough it was a Tsunami T1000 Diesel decoder. Then I recalled, I got this decoder in a trade. I never verified that it was a steamer.  So now I have a steam engine that thinks its a diesel. This sounds like an episode of Thomas the Tank engine.

Nonetheless, the engine runs very smoothly with  nice slow speed and a bright headlight. So that was encouraging. However, it doesn't have a lot of pulling capacity. Three-five cars is fine on the flat, but up a grade or around a sharp curve it has trouble with three cars. Adding weight helps, but it will need some more tuning to work out.

In the meantime, I am going to order a Stanton steam decoder and new BPS.  Since I last got a Stanton system, they have improved the BPS design. It can now take the power off the rails and route directly to the decoder if the rail power is of sufficient voltage. If the rail power drops out, the battery takes over. Meantime the system is keeping the battery charged up. Essentially, it becomes a keep  alive with a massive battery. It is possible to retrofit the current BPS with two diodes. But I plan to leave well enough alone on my other locos for now.

So until the new decoder arrives, Osceola is one very confused, wimpy, but fine running loco.