Working on Some Locos

Early this week most of my time was spent working on a couple of locos.  Firstly I picked up a second hand Wuiske 1550 in 12mm from Bob on Monday.  I scootered over to Bob's new place on Monday morning to pick up the loco and while there we had a coffee and talked about his new shed and his proposed high level track plan.  I think my job is now done, as I think I had him in two minds about what he was going to do with his new track plan.  I love it when I just throw the grenade and run.

Anyway, the new loco is my first 12mm loco so I can now test the various parts of the layout that have the 12mm and dual gauge track layed.  While we have had some 12mm locos running on Cassino courtesy of Darryl, this is my first loco.  I had ordered some from Southern, but who knows when they might turn up?   Once home I gave the loco a test on DC and as expected it was a good runner.  I took the shell off and inspected the inside to determine what sort of chip had to fit in it if I was to make it DCC.  Of Course that is my plan, so I went over to Ray’s on Tuesday and picked up a few decoders for the Club and one for the 1550.  The old decoders are now not too cheap.

I did some research about getting the marker lights or number boards controlled from a separate function.  There was a lot of talk on the web but no detail that I could find.  Very disappointing.  So I did some testing and was able to separate the front marker lights and added then to output number 3 from my NCE decoder that I installed into the loco.  So I can control these from the headlights, but the lights are so small, you can hardly see if they are on or not.  The 1550 ran well in Acacia Ridge Yard through all the trackage that had power.  I did find some areas that have not yet been wired to the DCC bus.  I think that is a job for later this week.

One of the guys from the Club also wanted me to install a decoder into a tram he picked up at the model train exhibition last weekend.  So I tested his tram on DC and it ran like a trooper.  It even had a headlight which amazed me.  So I pulled the tram apart and fitted a small decoder in it.  I also wired up the front headlight of the tram to the first Function output on the decoder.  I replaced the light with an LED and added a 3.7K ohm resistor to the circuit in an attempt to dull the light intensity down a bit.  The tram ran just as good on DCC.  I gave the owner the tram back on Saturday at the Club and he was thrilled at how well it ran on the Club layout.