Time to add a sound decoder.
Obviously, space is tight in this locomotive.
I considered getting a Doehler-Haass decoder because they make one of the smallest sound decoders. My preliminary measurements showed that this German decoder could reside inside the boiler.
https://doehler-haass.de/cms/pages/produkte/soundsystem/sd05a.php But just like other companies, in order to program it adequately, you must also purchase their proprietary programmer. That all adds up. And I thought… since the programmers of various companies are expensive, it would be better to pick an overall company and go with that one.
Thus, I decided to go with the ESU Loksound micro v5, purchasing the decoder and the programmer.
This is the smallest sound decoder ESU currently makes. Unfortunately, it’s much larger than I would like.
It would not fit in the boiler- even if I used a motor tool to cut down the boiler casting wall. (come on ESU, make one smaller).
I explored placing it in that big gap between the firebox and the front truck. But still too big.
In fact, when I got this decoder in hand, I was especially disappointed in the thickness. What makes it so fat is the wiring harness. It is a snap on module. This makes their design much easier, but I was hoping for a plain old hard wired decoder with no frills.
I knew it would fit in the tender. The truck would have to be removed. Then the weight would be removed and the decoder fitted in the spot where the weight currently resides. Also, would need to add weight along the inside of the tender shell. The down side would be that there would be 8 wires running between the tender and the cab, and even though they might be light weight wires, the tender is light and I didn’t want the pressure of the wires to twist or hinder the tender.
So there was one more place to try before going with the tender.
And that would be the firebox. It would be great if the decoder could slide under the plate for the worm.
I have to admit that this was a scary option. Because the decoder is so fat, I knew a sizable opening would have to be made-- and that a good deal of the lead weight would need to be removed from inside the firebox.
It took a lot of emotions to cut through that firebox wall with my motor tool- and to be honest, I probably would not have done it had I not had 2 more frames as a backup. If I destroyed this one, I would just move the drive train parts to a new frame.
As you can see in the following shot, I have to remove a LOT of material- which was not easy. I placed my motor tool bits in the chuck at the very edge so they could be as long as possible. It was very difficult to get up in there and NOT damage other parts of the frame.
Working on this end was not enough to get the decoder inserted far enough. So then I switched to the hole in the base plate for the notch in the worm bearing. I used a bit with a small head to get the head into that square hole and remove the last remaining lead weight that was blocking the decoder.
I damaged the hole a little bit, but it did not effect the worm bearing- and in the end, I succeeded in removing the material in the way. Also, a few grams of weight were lost- so I’ll add weight to the boiler later to compensate.
Actually, before I could fully insert the decoder for test fitting, I had to provide an exit for the decoder wires, so I cut a hole in the frame on the back side toward the motor.
