Hornby OO Southern Q1 with Zimo MS sound

Kit: MS480 hard-wired; RE Boomer 18x13x13; firebox glow; STACO3B stay-alive

Revisiting an old favourite here, we strip out the 8pin DCC socket from our Hornby Q1 to make space for a good speaker and stay-alive. The stay-alive is to be a Zimo STACO3B kit, which is a small charging PCB and 2 mid-sized GoldCaps (1F each), joined in series. They take a while to charge up, but once charged provided quite a few seconds of backup power.

Our STACO PCB and GoldCaps are protected in Kapton tape and secured with BlackTack. The MS480 is hard-wired and fixed to the other side of the motor worm housing. There is a surprising amount of space available in this quirky little model!

We also add a firebox light, using a nano orange SMD LEDs, attached to the green and blue wires of the decoder.

The LED sits into a drilled hole in the firebox door and we carefully route the wires upwards into the body to ensure they don't get snagged when the body goes back on.

Tidy it all up and we're done!

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