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Header: Hal-Zuzzu Model Railway Build Blog |
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| Published: Monday, July 24, 2023 | ||||||
| Post: #148/181 - Views: 46162 |
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Added sound and stay-alive to new tool Farish Class 08 Like everything else in life, don't knock anything until you try it. I was convinced that sound on a loco, especially N Gauge, was a waste of time and money. That was then. Now I see things differently. I am not planning on adding sound to any other loco for now but it could happen. So, I bought this a few months ago. Didn't want to buy a decoder for it as I was contemplating on sound and took my time about it. I drove it around a few times with the rubbish Dapol next18 decoders I have. It runs fine at high speed, but a Class 08 does not travel anywhere close to 60mph in real life, so that said, I'll stop here. As many have noticed from the picture of the 08, it is a new tool model, DCC sound ready, so first things first, the body needs to come off. 
It comes with a blanking plate and that needs to be removed. 
I went for the Zimo MS590 Sound Decoder. This is my first Zimo product. Fingers crossed. I'm a Lenz guy, so I have expectations from this decoder. 
I also wish to install a stay-alive and to make sure this fits in the cab, I bought the Zimo STACO 3A stay-alive. 
So I started with the sound decoder. That was an easy fit, but before doing any more mods to the loco, I wanted to give it a run. I change the address to a 4-digit address and tested it out. WOW, what an experience 
After testing the decoder, it was time to move on to the stay-alive. The first thing that needed to be done is to remove the cab from the body, 
I will be installing these two capacitors into the cab as there is no other place that I can put them. 
On the EWS Class 08, I used the Laisdcc Stay Alive Kit (on the right) but had to completely remove the inside of the cab, and I did not wish to do so on this model. It involved a lot of work. 
So I drilled a hole in the dashboard through which I passed the two wires from the stay-alive PCB to the capacitors, heat-shrunk the capacitors and tucked them neatly into the cab. 
If you are planning on this setup, be warned, there is enough room to put the stay-alive PCB in the cab alongside the capacitors. 
With the cab back on, I moved on to soldering the wires from the stay-alive PCB to the sound decoder. 
Refer to your user manual as to where you should solder your stay-alive wires to your decoder. 
That done, I installed the stay-alive PCB under the sound decoder. It was a very tight fit, but it works. 
I later changed my plan because the PCB was so tight under the decoder, that each time I took off the body, the PCB was wedged inside the body and pulled off the decoder in progress. I removed the PCB from under the decoder and installed it inside the cab as mentioned above. 
Until this point, I thought the job was done. Well, in reality, it was, but I was not too pleased with the result. The amount of time the stay-alive had to offer was way too short. It was under two seconds and the sound was breaking up once again. After a lot of research, I decided to go back to my tried and tested stay-alive model, although many of you are ready to give me hell for using them) I find the Laisdcc Stay Alive Kit works best for me, but ended up removing the dashboard from the body to make room for the 4 capacitors. 
After some final touches with the Dremel and file, I got the Laisdcc Stay Alive Kit to fit well in the cab.
The cab slid back into its place neatly making the stay-alive invisible. 
Here's a look at the stay-alive from the underside of the body. 
And finally, here is a short run of the new tool Graham Farish Class 08 with sound and stay-alive. A full video will be published on my Youtube channel in the near future. Stay tuned and don't forget to register for post updates...Check out the live CCTV camera HERE |
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So little effort, so much gained