Hi everyone. Though I've posted here a few times over the last year, I haven't really introduced myself as I should have. I live in central Illinois and model the NKP (in N-scale, obviously). I used to have a pretty large basement layout until we converted the basement into a home theater room. My current layout is along three walls of a spare bedroom, and is set in, say, summer of 1956, when Berks still ruled the mainline, but the triple-stripe diesels were creeping up on them. Over the past year, inspired by the work of PowersteamGuy (a/k/a Bob), I've converted six LL Berkshires, 4 Kato Mikados and most recently two Walthers 0-8-0's to sound using Soundtraxx Tsunami sound decoders. The Berks have the full size Tsunami and a 14X25mm speaker in the tender; the switchers and Mikes use the new Micro Tsunami and a 15mm round speaker in the tender. In the case of the Berks and the Mikes, I use the Tsunami's for sound only; motor control is provided by a Lenz Silver Mini mounted in the cab. I've posted two videos of my "Noisy Plate Road" (as I've started calling it) that feature the switchers and one of the Berks. The first is about a 5-minute video of the two switchers transferring a caboose to the end of a train. It is available here: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJiOVw2aX2I"]YouTube - N-Scale NKP Steam w/Sound 1[/ame] The second is about 8 minutes long, and shows Berk #740 pulling out of the roundhouse onto the turntable, being turned, backing toward its train, and then pulling a reefer block out of the yard and around the layout. It is available here: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kudjM0qjeS0"]YouTube - N-Scale NKP Berkshire w/Sound[/ame] My camera work, unfortunately, still leaves a bit to be desired, and on the second video you'll hear my cat meowing in the background as the big Berk pulls its train out of the yard. Beware the cat! (Fortunately, she hasn't shown any interest in jumping up on the layout). In any event, I hope these two videos will provide a bit more of an introduction for me, and any comments are more than welcome! John Colombo
Two decoders? John, may I ask why you are using two decoders? The Tsunami will provide very good motor control and has one of the best sounds there are. I have several Tsunami's installed. Three into Kato Mike's and the newest one into a Walthers 2-6-6-2. The Walthers has two speakers all mounted in the tender with the decoder. The Kato's have the decoder and the speaker all in the tender too. Just wondering.
Wow!!!! that big berk has an outstanding sound and whistle,a lot of the N scale sound systeams have an weak whistle,yours is great!! JIM
I had converted the Berks to DCC with cab-installed Lenz Silver Mini's before thinking about sound. When I decided to try putting sound in, I decided that it would be simpler to just leave the motor decoders in place, rather than trying to run wires back to the tender for this. So mostly this was just inertia; since the engines already had a motor decoder in them, I just didn't want to hassle with re-wiring. With the Mikes, I actually tried running wires back into the tender, and found trying to route the wires too frustrating. Plus I couldn't find a really good solution to the problem of having the tender "hard wired" to the engine, which I didn't really want to do (I tried a few different micro-connectors, and didn't fare well with any of them). So I ended up doing the same thing for them - Lenz motor decoders in the cab and a micro-Tsunami in the tender for sound. John C.
John: Where did you place the micro Tsunami decoder and speaker in the Walthers 0-8-0? There's barely enough room in the tender for a lenz mini silver/gold decoder. Thanks....
Took out all the weights and the big PC board, leaving just the tiny circuit board where the wires from the engine attach at the front of the tender. Used a 15mm round speaker with the Soundtraxx round enclosure, which I had to sand down height-wise about 2mm to fit. Mounted the speaker enclosure right in back of the first row of solder pads on the small circuit board (it sits on top of the second row), then mounted the micro-Tsunami behind the speaker enclosure. Wired the Tsunami to the appropriate pads on the connector-circuit board, plus an additional wire from each contact strip in the tender to the corresponding pad for the power wire coming from the engine (from left to right with the tender front facing away from you, the wire order is gray, black, blue, white, red, orange; I soldered a 28-gauge wire from the tender strips to the pad for the black and red wires to the engine). Packed tungsten putty in all the open space left (not much!) to add weight. It's a tight fit, but it works. The speaker ends up right below the opening for the coal load, offset to the front of that opening. I should have taken pictures of this while I was doing it, darn it. Now I've got so much tungsten putty wedged in everywhere I'm afraid to take the tender shell off! John C.
John: Thanks for the detailed explanation. Too bad you didn't take any photo's of the installation. How did you remove the large weight that sits on the floor of the tender? Thanks...
After you take out the large circuit board (two screws and desoldering wires), there's another screw (I think) that holds in the large weight. My recollection is: Step 1: unscrew and remove the small weight that sits on top of the large weight. Step 2: unscrew, desolder (or just cut the wires and desolder them from the pads on the engine-connection board later) and remove large circuit board. Step 3: Unscrew and take out large weight. Once all the weights and large circuit board are out of the tender, there's only the tiny circuit board/plug for the engine wires left, and there's a surprising amount of room in there. John
John: Thanks again for posting the details on removing the weights in the Walthers 0-8-0. Your description will make it much easier for those who are unfamiliar with the insides of this loco to navigate and make this installation a success. By removing all the weights you would create enough room for a sound decoder and speaker. The only issue is to get enough moldable weight back in the tender to provide good tracking of the tender. That can be done with Tungsten. A Lok-Sound decoder and speaker might also fit in that space as well.
John, Are you running a cam on the 0-8-0? The chuff timing is spot on at any speed from the looks of the video.
Nope, no cam. I just fiddled with a custom speed table until I got it pretty much right. I wanted to lower the maximum voltage anyway to make the most of switching speeds. So I programmed a table, and then just fiddled around with each speed step until the drivers looked to be pretty much in sync with the chuffs. Took a while, but it worked out pretty well, and once I got one right, I just copied the settings over to the other one. I probably spent about 20 hours fitting the Tsunami and speaker and then doing the programming in #206. After that, #207 took about a hour and a half . . . I keep thinking I should buy a couple more just to amortize the time invested in #206! John
Really great sound!!! While I don't know if I will ever get to a point where I can use sound it at least is inspiring to see what you have done, and how great the Tsunami sound is!!!
Thanks. I've found that having sound in the steam engines really makes me pay attention to scale speeds. When the sound is off, I have a tendency to run the Berks through the yard way too fast. But when you can hear those chuffs, it makes you aware that the engine needs to be running S-L-O-W. Same with the switchers. So I really highly recommend going the sound route, even if it doesn't come anywhere near the intensity of the prototype. I've actually heard NKP 765 and 587 (a Mike) in operation, and there's just no way to describe hearing a Berk at track speed. But I find the sound coming out of my N-scale steamers perfectly appropriate to the scale involved. And the Tsunami really is terrific; I tried one of their old DSX units in the Berks and didn't at all like the sound of the chuffs. I've also tried one of the Loksound units, which are better, but I think still not as good as the Tsunami (plus the Loksounds require a weird 100-ohm speaker). The micro-Tsunami is a god-send to N scale, IMHO. Lots of folks have inspired me over the years, so if I can help inspire a few others, that's how we all give back to the hobby. John C.
John...I am far from being a 'steamer' guy...but...I never fail to be absolutely awed by them and you guys and the work you put into them. Very impressive indeed...thnxs
I'm working on putting together a write up for installing a Mircro-Tsunami in the Berk. LOT's of pics. Even got adventurous with my second one and installed a cam. The cam needs a bit of tweaking still but at least I know it can be done.
Did you use the "Medium Steam" or the "Heavy Steam"? The ones I used in the Mikes and Berks are "Medium Steam" mostly because I liked the one whistle that I use on the medium better than any of the ones on the heavy and the chuffs sounded pretty good to me. But I wonder if the chuffing is any different on the heavy? The chuff sounds on the "light steam" that I used in the 0-8-0's are much different from the ones on the medium steam. John C.
That's great! Makes me want to try to fiddle with my 0-8-0 again. I got so frustrated with its poor running that it's been sitting idle for 6 mos.
Mine didn't run well either. I fiddled with all the motor control CV's in the Tsunami and finally found a combination that sort of works to run them, although they still hiccup on occasion (particularly starting - sometimes I've got to quickly bump the speed up to get the engine started, particularly in the reverse direction). I think that without a good back-EMF-etc. DCC decoder, it will be hard to get them running smoothly. I've heard that the second batch runs much better; can anyone actually confirm this? John C.
John, I have the C&O's from the second batch and they run much better out of the box. The word is the frames were either slightly warped or missaligned in assembly on the first batch although I have an Erie from the first batch that ran great out of the box. The Erie did take some fiddling with the wire harness to get the best traction out of it. The 2nd release C&O's worked fine out of the box and pulled 25 cars with about half on a 2% grade with no problems. The Erie would only manage about 12 before fiddling and after I could get 16. The C&O has now had weight added to it and will pull 35 cars on level. The original shell and weights weighed in at 5g. The lead added 10g to the overall weight of the loco.
