I have one more Loksound Select V4 micro decoder, and wanted to put it in another one off project, saving any of my locomotive fleet that would be MU’d for V5s. I know they can be matched but I figured why not use it in a one off.
A while back I started customizing two Kato RDCs to better match VIA Rail 6133 and 6135, which ran together on Vancouver island for decades. There were times when one left for service and was temporarily replaced, or when a third was added... but these two seemed to always be around. I rode them once when I was a kid and always thought it was cool that one had a blue VIA logo and the other a yellow. Details included ditch lights, roof mounted head light, newer style pilot and plow, diaphragms and various windows being filled or altered. There are a few other details I could have done to make them accurate but I wasn’t interested in that kind of surgery on this project.
Here is the prototype:
Enough on that though this is about the DCC install.
This install is a bit of an experiment in that I want to use one decoder for both RDCs, and still have two speakers. My speakers are 8 ohm and the decoder is stable to 4 ohms so I’m good there.
The other features I intended to include are working, directional head lights, marker lights, and ditch lights. An important feature to me was to hide the speakers and decoder to preserve the see through look of the passenger compartments.
To accomplish this I decided to make one of them a dummy. With the motor removed there is plenty of room there to hold the decoder and a couple of capacitors.
The radiator blisters are hollow and have plenty of room for a speaker inside without intruding on the passenger compartment. Once I silicon around the speaker, and use silicone to seal the blister during the final install, it will create a sealed enclosure for the speakers. One will go in each car. I’m using Knowles Fox 9x16 speakers.
The first thing to do was to tear one down and make it a dummy. I removed all of the drive components including the gears in the trucks. What’s left was a fairly free rolling car. Tests proved that the powered RDC could pull the dummy no problem at all.
With that question answered I went in to planning how I was going to do this.
With the motor in one car, the decoder in the other, and three sets of lights at each end, there was going to have to be some wires passing between the cars. I have the benefit of the VIA Rail cars using diaphragms so the wires could be hidden. In the photo below I’m using Kato knuckle couplers and American Models LTD heavy weight diaphragms (smaller and closer coupling than their other ones). Since this photo was taken I replaced the couplers with the factory Kato plastic coupler which brought them close enough together that the diaphragms touch, so the wiring will be completely concealed.... and the models look much better.
While these cars will always run together, and likely be stored together, I still wanted to be able to disconnect them for service or whatever. I had a total of 9 wires that had to pass through so I needed a fairly small connector. My local electronics store had header blocks which I believe were 2.5mm pitch, but they were too large. On eBay I found some 1.25mm pitch connectors. I ordered them and they were perfect. I was able to fit them side by side inside the diaphragm with plenty of space for movement in turns and on grades.
While on the subject of wiring, I opted to put the ditch lights and head light together on one function. This reduced the wiring complication, and I will always be running the ditch lights during operation anyway.
I wired the two cars like a locomotive and tender. All wheels collect power. So the first two wires are red and black at the ends of each car, soldered to the bronze pick up strips.
Before the interior went back in, I had to isolate the motor tabs with Kapton tape (shown here with the interior back in)
I also had to wire the capacitors and put it, along with the decoder in the motor compartment of the dummy.
With the motor, capacitors, and decoder wired I could reinstall the interiors.
The next step was to make looms of wires that ran the distance of the cars to connect all of the components together from the lighting at the ends, to the connectors.
At this point it was time to connect the cars together. I made the connections to the connectors with the connectors assembled. This allowed me to make sure that I matched the position of each wire on either side of the connector, and also that the connectors were directly in the middle of the cars and had enough slack to disconnect and connect them working around the diaphragms. In this photo you can see a bundle of magnet wire and blue wire. These will go to the radiator blister for the speaker. The blue wires are the positive leg of the capacitor wires. I’m running it up to the radiator blister so that I can make/break the capacitor connection for programming. I don’t have access to a programmer right now and this will make it easy for me to load the RDC sounds later by simply removing the radiator blister and disconnecting the wire.
The connectors are reversed so that I’ll never plug the wrong ones together. One is a four section and one is 5, but I would still mix it up, haha. The two missing wires on the right in the next photo are the speaker wires that are not yet installed. The four section plug is Track power and motor connections.
At this stage I tested the operation of the two together on my DCC test loop. Operation was just as I had hoped. It was time to move to lighting. I had actually installed the LEDs for the ditch lights much earlier but I’ll cover them now so it’s all at once.
The ditchlight housings are Sunrise Enterprise metal castings. They are recessed in the front of the cab.
They exit to the inside of the shell in such a position that wires or fibre optics would be pinched or broken by the shell seating down around the light housings and such. So I decided to mount the LEDs on the chassis. This would simplify wiring as well. Fibre optics are installed in the lights and cut flush on the inside. Both ends are finished with heat to round and polish them. The LEDs are 0603 warm white LEDs mounted on styrene blocks and aligned to sit in front of the fibre optics when the shell is on. They have styrene squares on top to help prevent light shining up into the windows.
Here is the effect with the shell in place and the LEDs powered up. I still need to address some light bleed. A bunch of black paint will help, especially at the bottom of the windows.
The roof top light is a Miniatures by Eric resin casting which I hollowed out to accept the Kato light pipe. It and the marker lights will be lit by the factory Kato lighting board. That’s what I worked on next.
The Kato light boards needed to be modified to fit in between the ditch light LEDs, isolated for DCC, and have the white LED replaced to match the ditch lights. So there actually isn’t much of it left. I still chose to modify it as it perfectly aligns the big 3mm LEDs with the light pipes and blocks this light from shining all over the place.
First I removed the SMD resistors. Then I removed the yellow LED, and finally I sanded them narrow enough to fit between the ditch lights. What I was left with was the four contacts for the LEDs. I tested to see which was the positive and used a resistor lead to join these together as a common. Then I soldered a white and a yellow wire to the red and white LED positions. They are reversed from one end to the other as both are a front and a rear. It just depends on the direction of travel.
After this I moved to wires and resistors in the cab. For the forward wire at each end I soldered three 1.5k SMD resistors to a resistor lead as a sort of manifold. One for each of the forward LEDs. To the reverse wire at each end I soldered a single 1K SMD resistor. The two ditch light (-) wires were each soldered to their own resistor and the (+) wires went to the common blue. Each end is reversed from the other. The modified Kato boards for the main LEDs are ready to install once the white LEDs arrive.
This is where I’ve had to take a break, as I’m waiting for the 3mm white LEDs to arrive.
The next steps will be to install those circuit boards. After that I can move onto speakers.
Craig.
