Example 1: Kernow's OO Steam RailMotor - Just Sound

Kit: MS450PluX22

Kernow's lovely steam RailMotor is finely detailed, and nicely designed with a PluX22 DCC socket in the roof, and a factory-fit round speaker on board as standard. This example shows a pre-production model sample.

We have fitted a Zimo MS450PluX22 sound decoder here, which is a piece of cake.

Directional lamps and interior lighting is controlled via the decoder.

We have used some BlackTack to install the 'sample' 1000uF capacitor that comes with the MS450 as stay-alive in the luggage area. This helps to avoid sound break-up and light flicker. A bigger stay-alive such as a SuperCap or MGOLANG would have been simple too.

Not shown here, but if you wanted to upgrade the speaker from the factory round one, we reckon a dual SugarCube 24x15x08 should be feasible in the luggage area instead.

This one is a pre-production model, but should be pretty much the same in the final release.

Example 2: Upgrade Speaker and Big Stay-Alive

Kit: MS450PluX22; SugarStrand25X20X08; MGOLANG

The factory 23mm round speaker is ok, but can be improved fairly easily. Various dual-driver cube speakers are possible, such as SugarCube24X15X08, but we opt for even bigger using a dual Strand speaker.

This model is a final release version of the Railmotor.

Removing the body is a little delicate... first take out the chimney, then carefully release the bottoms of the handrails on each side so the body can be unclipped. We used a piece of Kapton tape to keep the tops of the rails in place, as they can ping out rather easily!

Take out the PluX22 blanking plate.

The end lamps are connected with some plungers onto the PCB when the body is in place. Lamps are a little bright, but can be dimmed by setting CV#114=252 (applies dimming for F0F and F0R), then using CV#60 to adjust the brightness.

Here is the kit that we want to fit.

Remove the PCB screws, and we can slightly angle-up the board in order to gain access to the speaker screws. We'll take the factory speaker out altogether.

If we stuck with the slightly smaller SugarCube24X15X08 then there is space to simply fit that in without further ado. However, with the larger SugarStrand25X20X08, the little anti-flicker capacitor that hangs off the model's PCB gets in the way. It is a fairly easy job to unsolder this capacitor, put some short lengths of wire in, and readd the little cap on wires instead - this gives us the flexibility to place the cap wherever we want.

The SugarStrand speaker is wired in, threaded through the hole in the main board, and soldered to the Speaker connection points.

The MGOLANG stay-alive (GoldCap array) is also wired in, connected directly to the appropriate pads on the decoder itself.

We form a neat package of the speaker, MGOLANG, and the anti-flicker cap, the readjust the little cap's position to fit nicely in the gap, using BlackTack to hold it all together.

A couple of pieces of tape to hold the wiring in place, especially to keep the pluger pads clear, so they make good contact when the body goes back on.

In all its' glory!

...then weathered too...

Example 3: Bigger stay-alive, more convenient arrangement

Kit: MS450PluX22; SugarStrand25X20X08; 6x 1F GoldCaps

To avoid having to more the anti-flicker capacitor (which is a bit of a pain), we change our stay-alive solution to 6 discrete GoldCaps instead. They all need to be joined in series, the same as the MGOLANG array, but we can choose how to position them. So, 2 arrays of 3 GoldCaps will fit neatly either side of the anti-flicker cap, and we can even go with the bigger 1F GoldCaps instead of 0.3F.

Wire in the 2 triplets, protect with Kapton, and simply secure them with BlackTack. A little more effort to assemble the GoldCaps, but no need to move the anti-flicker cap.

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.