Boiler & Tank
Outfitting After the brass boiler and tank were assembled, soft metal detail parts were added to them. Not only do the parts add the detail, but they also add weight — something all motive power needs.
The Cab This cab was rather com- plex because of the step- down floor. All holes are in place ready to accept their grab irons and fit- tings. Notice the rear grab rail has already been added to the body.
warned of this possibility, and yes, there are work- arounds. Plus, adding a resistor would have dimmed the LEDs.) Instead, I replaced them with 16-volt lamps, which, being longer, required a shroud around the back of the headlight. Tony’s Train Exchange recommends removing all filtering devices (capacitors, resistors, and the like) from the Spectrum engines, saying these will inter- fere with DCC operation. Bachmann (through the “Ask the Bach-Man” Message Forum) says removing capacitors, or snipping one capacitor lead may be needed for some decoders. Any other modification to the printed circuit board (PCB) voids the warranty. If you try this and elect to discard the board and its connected filtering devices, the red and black wires coming from the drive wheels connect to the red and black wires of the de- coder. The decoder’s orange and gray wires connect to the motor leads. (I chose to solder all con- nections; a four-pin connector would have been better, consider- ing how many times I had to take it apart.) Insulate all connections. As detailed below, I removed the PCB in one kit and left the other in — you can’t tell the difference. If retaining the PCB, adding the
Nearly Finished After the sub-assemblies were finished and per- fected, they were joined to each other to form the body of the locomotive. The process for building this model is not unlike that used to build a real locomotive.
SoundTraxx oval speaker on the 0-6-0 means tipping the circuit board from horizontal to vertical to allow room for a speaker enclo- sure behind the smokebox. The 2-6-2 got its oval speaker in one of the side tanks; the other side tank holds the decoder. I’ve made my speaker enclosures from lead — the extra weight doesn’t hurt and lead won’t vibrate like the thin etched brass tanks might. (If you try this, don’t eat or smoke while working with lead, and clean up well afterward.) In the 0-6-0 saddle tank, the only place for the decoder is in the top of the tank, though putting the decoder above the motor is not preferred. On the side-tank model, the in- structions say to join tank wrap- per (front and outside piece with etched rivet heads) to tank inner frame with CA. That does work and might be okay if you continue to handle it carefully. However, by the time I had cut out the inside vertical tank wall to add decoder and speaker, the outside wrap-
42 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
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