Video

OvO

@@sd80mac all the whistles I made and use should be available on my GitHub repository. I might instead make it a Google drive for ease of access tho

the TCS Keep alive works great with Loksound as long as you don't program with it. Keep alive is literally just hardwired to the power, as all tcs keepalives are, so when you are programming, the signals get muddled, preventing programming to occur. think of passenger car lights without capacitors, when you add capacitors to the circuit, it makes the lights drain slower. the decoder programs in fast pulses, so adding capacitance to these pulses basically extends the signals to the point where its constant, so basically no cv's get changed. The speakers are Stock, i just added some black electrical tap to the sides of the tender shell to dampen the vibration.

@@nathanburke1224 Thanks so much for the insight! Thank god Bachmann used a 21 pin plug so modelers can easily do decoder swaps themselves lol. I wonder how easy selling the OEM TCS was

@@CentralJerseyRailfan I personally just use it in an older locomotive just to record sounds off of if i need them. though, i wonder if you could sell second hand decoders at all

It was a luck find on ebay, was just another day looking for new locos to buy when i saw a pretty crummy picture on a listing, everything seemed legit, 'round $175 shipped, bit the bullet, came less than a week later, one elephant ear was broken off but super easy fix. Ive been keepin my eye out for another one since, but they sell like hot cakes when spotted, unfortunately its a luck of the draw right now, but tbh ive seen a fair number of BLI Niagaras for sale poppin up here and there. you might have more luck there tbh

Yep! probably gonna change it out though, doesn't quite fit the bill, lol.

I’ll also be adding a custom horn to mine

Since this is loksound, every light has a separate function (minus the marker lights as front and rear sets are wired in groups) and it's as simple as using a function button to activate it. I went for something more complicated tho and made it come on when the train went into emergency shutdown mode. I also added an emergency light in the cab to exemplify the mode.

oh i also forgot, instead of using the horn to activate the grade crossing lights, i use the bell

Did you reprogram anything on the locomotive? I have the same model and I can't get the upper lights to flash except when the horn blows, also you have a cab light that mine doesn't seem to have and the emergency stop light I can not get to work at all. I use a Digitrak DCS 52 DCC system, and I've already reprogrammed the main lights to their brightest. I wonder if there is a cv I have to change for the cab light, and I want to put the emergency light on a function button that they are not using like F21/22.

@@tonyansill3093 keep in mind the stock motherboard on the dcc ready model does not have enough outputs to wire all the lights, I've replaced the stock board on mine with a Decoder Buddy V5 so i could utilize all the functions.

@@tonyansill3093 if you have the dcc sound equipped version, that would be a soundtraxx board and i cant really help you there, sorry

Just had to rewatch some old footage to make sure, yep youre right, ill fix it later though, it still looks cool

honestly you have to find the best sound sample you can, hardly any amount of cleanup will make the sound better, it is very hard to remove any amount of Chuffing, grade crossing or locomotive bell ringing. easiest bet, but not always the most realistic sounding, are whistle showoffs. either on a stand or the locomotive sitting still itself. the harder but most realistic sounding ones are when the loco is moving, but not chugging, best example i can think of is this Video by @MyAmazingWorld at 1:14 czcams.com/video/4snE-KAFpbE/video.htmlsi=i9cPijobyyHnadHl&t=74 as for chopping up the file itself, i might have to make a dedicated video at some point, its not very complicated, but there is a proper way of doing it to make it easier and less mind bending if you know what i mean. BTW, all the custom whistles and horns, as well as a few other sounds, Ive uploaded to a Github repository. I'm pretty sure i put a link on my channel in the community tab, ill double check and make sure its updated at some point

Ho Scale

I could probably make a google file holding custom whistles I've put together. I don't know if the people at ESU will like that though. I'll try it out for a while.

​​@@nathanburke1224I don't think the people at ESU have had a problem with people doing that so far, I know Bradley dcc sells they're sound sets

yeah, I have painted the wheels, but admittedly not very well, but it was black so you could hardly see it anyways.

was never really into the sp 6 chime unfortunately, never quite "fit" imho