The latest lok I have had on the bench is a BR50 with a Tub tender.
This was a repair job but mostly needed the wiring tidied up.The body had been forced down over the wiring and because of this the mounts that the chassis screws go into were broken , I have had a few of the BR50s that I have fixed that have had the same problem.Usually with decoders mounted in the boiler.
Above – This locomotive has already been converted to DCC but needed a tidy up off the wiring, the mounts that the two screws (from the chassis) had been broken, This is quite common where the body has been forced down over the wiring - mainly with installs that have the decoder in the firebox/boiler.
The Locomotive has a Suethe smoke unit installed and that is wired through the chassis connected to Aux1 of the decoder but powered from the left hand rail (half-wave) The Uhlenbrock speaker enclosure fits nicely at the back of the cab in the enclosed section. I decided to leave the wiring for the lights and Smoke unit at the half wave power.
To fix the mountings that the chassis screws screw into - cut the mount off short leaving about 2 mm. Use some plastic rod and drill a hole through the centre (to accept the screw) Using the original screw as a “tap” cut some thread into the new mount. Then use an off-cut of a small screw as a locating pin – screw that into the bodies mounts cut the new mount to length (the overall hight of the mount is 11mm) and glue and screw it on the locating pin.
The tender and motor only need some minor modifications. Unsolder the wiring- then remove the terminal that was soldered to the brown wire. The wires from the decoder will be soldered directly to the motor terminals.
The terminal that is grounded through the screw will need to be cut. This will allow the black wire from the decoder a connection to the tender’s left-hand wheel pickups.
The wires to the speaker are passed through a hole cut in the centre of the fire box door . the wires from the locomotive to the decoder pass through a slot cut in the centre of the firebox floor , sometimes it is better to offset this to right side (above the wires coming from the tender) but as this had already been cut I left the wires pass through this hole . This is why the mount was broken in the first place!
The Uhlenbrock decoder is a neat unit and has many features. Good motor control and extra slow running with this loco.
The Square speaker enclosure looks like it was designed to fit in this Loco with hardly any trouble filling the space perfectly.
The Loco (even without a flywheel) has extremely good slow running characteristics. -just as good as the BR81 (a few posts back) 2min to travel 30cm with this decoder - Sound is good and seems to be well synchronised with the locomotive's movements . I was impressed with the Uhlenbrock sound decoder . Not as many separate sounds as a Loksound but there are lots of modifications that you can do to the decoder plus it has the SUSI socket to add additional decoders (sound Only)
Reduced: 95% of original size [ 900 x 824 ] - Click to view full image
The Speaker is hardly noticeable in the cab
Paint the wiring that links the Locomotive to the tender, black to make it less noticeable.
All in All a fun project and a great loco.
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