ESU LokSound in a Bachmann 2-8-0 Consolidation

jdcolombo Jul 28, 2015

  1. jdcolombo

    jdcolombo TrainBoard Member

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    Hi everyone.

    An earlier thread in this sub-forum asked about installing sound in a Bachmann Consolidation. It just so happens that over the past several months I've been updating sound installations that I did years ago in my steam locos - before ESU LokSound came out with their v.4 and Select Micro decoders, and long before I discovered Knowles Acoustics and their line of cell-phone type speakers. I just completed an update in my Bachmann 2-8-0, and posted this tutorial over on The Railwire. After seeing the earlier thread asking about sound in this very engine, I thought I'd post this here at TrainBoard as well.

    First, as usual when I post these "tutorials," I'll cut to the chase. Here's a video of the completed project:



    And here's how I did it. This version of the Consolidation is the one released in 2001; it was DCC ready, with space in the boiler area to fit a small decoder, but it did not have wiring running to the tender as does the most recent version (the DCC-equipped version, released in 2010). However, I bought a couple of DCC-ready tenders from Bachmann shortly after buying these engines, so this particular Connie had the Bachmann DCC-ready tender, which had a circuit board inside for connecting a decoder.

    Because I wanted to keep a way to detach the tender from the engine if I needed to, I decided to use a 4-wire TCS wiring harness with micro connectors on each end to connect the engine to the tender. TCS makes a variety of these harnesses, some with mini-connectors, some 6 wire, some color coded. I chose the micro connector (smaller than the mini connector) to save space in the tender, and didn't use a color-coded harness - the one I have has three black wires and one white wire (so you can plug the harness together in the right orientation). If I were using more than 4 wires, I'd use a color-coded harness just to keep all the wires straight.

    Photos 1 and 2 below show how to route the harness and wire it to the engine. I removed the shell and desoldered the motor wires along with the wires going to the headlight circuit board. This engine used a yellow LED as the headlight; I decided to change this to a “sunny white” 3mm LED from Richmond Controls. I routed two of the four wires on each side of the engine; the middle two wires of the harness are the motor wires. If you label the wires starting with the white wire as 1 (for the white wire), 2, 3, and 4, then wire 2 is soldered to the engineer side motor brush and will eventually hook to the orange decoder wire. Wire 3 goes to the fireman side motor brush, and the gray decoder wire. Wire 1 (the white wire) goes to the cathode (negative) of the LED; I have wired a 1/8-watt, 1K-ohm resistor in-line with this as a dropping resistor for the LED (you might be able to see the bulge in the heat-shrink tubing at the end of the white wire in Photo 2; this is where the resistor is). Wire #4 goes to the anode (positive) of the LED, and eventually to the blue decoder wire. I left about 2” of the harness hanging from the back of the engine – this will connect to the other end of the harness (wired to the ESU decoder) inside the tender – and then cut the ends of the wires to the necessary length for wiring to the motor and LED.

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    After completing the engine wiring harness, I put the shell back on and set the engine aside. Then it was time to work on the tender. The tender is a DCC-ready medium tender from Bachmann that came with a circuit board installed. I took out the circuit board by removing the two screws holding it on and desoldering the wires to the phosphor bronze pickup strips. The following photo shows the stripped-down tender:

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    I drilled some #70 holes in the coal load for sound egress and then wired the other end of the 4-wire harness to the ESU’s white, orange, gray and blue wires, to match to the engine harness. I cut off the yellow, green and violet function wires, since I didn’t need them for this installation. I also installed two 16v, 220uf tantalum caps wired in parallel for keep alive (WARNING: I keep my track voltage at 11.5v; if you don’t know your track voltage or will be running the engine on other layouts, I recommend using 100uf 20v caps instead; you can fit three of these in the space where I have my two located and that should be plenty to avoid momentary dropouts). The positive (stripe) end of the caps is wired to the blue decoder wire; the negative end is wired to a blank pad on the “back” side of the decoder directly opposite the blue wire; I used the greed wire I had cut from the decoder for this connection.
    The photo below shows the ESU decoder installed in the back of the tender shell with the TCS harness wired in and the connections to the caps which are immediately to the decoder’s left. The red and black wires have been stripped and tinned, and the brown wires await connection to the speaker.

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    The speaker is a 9x16mm Knowles Fox (now replaced by the Knowles Wildcat, same size) that I put in a custom enclosure. The enclosure is made from .040 styrene on the long sides and .020 on the short sides and bottom; this makes the overall length of the speaker/enclosure a perfect friction fit inside the tender, firing up at the coal load. The depth of the enclosure is 7.5mm. I put the speaker in place, then soldered the speaker leads to the ESU’s speaker output wires (the brown wires) and the red and black wires to the pickup strips inside the tender. The photo below shows the completed wiring in the tender.

    [​IMG]

    Then I reattached the tender (with the shell still hanging off) to the engine, connected the engine harness to the decoder harness with the micro-plug, and popped the shell back on the tender. Here's a photo of the final result with the coal load removed so you can see what this looks like: if you look carefully at the photo with maximum enlargement, you should be able to just make out the harness wires at the bottom of the tender to the left of the speaker; to the right are the two keeper caps.

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    And that's it (well, I put the coal load back on!). I know the Connie has been a very popular engine, and hope that this helps those of you who might want to add sound but have been reluctant to do so. It's really not that hard, and if you have one of the DCC-installed units, it is even easier because Bachmann already provides the wiring back to the tender.

    As always, I'm happy to answer any questions about the installation.

    John C.
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2015
    papahnash likes this.
  2. jdcolombo

    jdcolombo TrainBoard Member

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    And just a note that if I were doing this install again, I'd probably use the Knowles Donau 11x15mm speaker, instead of the Wildcat 9x16mm. The 9x16mm just fits, but I had to sand down the short ends a bit to make it work; with the Donau, you'd have a bit more flexibility on the side-to-side fit. As you can see from the last photo, there's plenty of room left in the tender to accommodate the 11mm (vs. 9mm) width of the Donau. I have one more Connie to update, and may try the Donau in it to see how it all works out.

    John C.
     
  3. RedRiverRR4433

    RedRiverRR4433 TrainBoard Member

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    Nice work John. I used the ESU LokSound V4.0 Micro decoder with Zimo cube speakers in three Spectrum 2-8-0's about 3-4 years ago. This is an easy installation and the sound is great. :cool::cool: I didn't detach the wires running from the locomotive to the tender. I also used the original tender that came with the Spectrum 2-8-0

    Shades
     
  4. jdcolombo

    jdcolombo TrainBoard Member

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    What sound file did you use in the v.4?

    John C.
     
  5. RedRiverRR4433

    RedRiverRR4433 TrainBoard Member

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    John:

    I've been using sound decoders on my layouts since 2001 when I started to use Soundtraxx sound only decoders under the bench work. In those days I used a Shay sound with the Spectrum 2-8-0 as that decoder was close to the sounds of a 2-8-0. You did have a choice of whistles with the decoder.

    On two Spectrum 2-8-0's I used file # 82860 which is for a 2-8-0 that you can find in the ESU Lok-Sound micro v 3.5 series. We downloaded it to a ESU LokSound v 4.0 Micro decoder to test it out.

    For the third Spectrum 2-8-0 I went back to a Shay file # 74415 which has I think had 4 whistle selections and I chose one that was close to the sounds in the Soundtraxx sound only Shay decoder. These files work for me and I'm pleased with the results. I still have another Southern 2-8-0 that needs a sound decoder and I'll probably use the Shay file again. All the 2-8-0's have Zimo cube speakers installed with the Lok-Sound decoders. :cool::cool:


    Shades
     
  6. hoyden

    hoyden TrainBoard Supporter

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    Thanks for sharing, John. I have two that are DCC ready. Nice to know what lies ahead when this project comes active.
     

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