Hornby 48DS Ruston Hornsby with Zimo sound and stay-alive

Kit: MS500; SugarCube7; STACO3A

Hornby's little 48DS is one of the smallest OO models, so precious little space to work with. We therefore have to use the cab for most of the kit, but that does mean we can get a good speaker and an excellent stay-alive fitted.

Here we assemble the STACO3 stay-alive kit, which is a small PCB and a pair of mini GoldCaps connected in series. This will slot in the back of the cab.

A SugarCube speaker is fixed into the cab roof and painted black to hide.

The MS500 sound decoder is installed in the engine bay where the 6pin DCC socket was (had to remove to hard-wire). Some neat connection of all the wiring, but it goes in, and runs pretty well even without the trailing attached (which gives extra pickups). The GoldCaps take a few seconds to fully charge, but once up and running, works really well and sounds excellent with our Fowler 0-4-0 diesel mechanical sounds.

Please note that these guides are provided as useful resources for you, as-is. YouChoos cannot be held responsible for errors in the information, or for any damage caused to your models or equipment if you choose to follow any of the steps detailed here.