So near and yet so far away for completion

Sorry for the tardiness of this week's post, I was intending to do something earlier but the week got away from me! Well last week's success with the Select was a bit premature. Basically after wiring up the lights and going for a test run, I blew them up with too much voltage. I hadn't wired resistors between the decoder and the 1.5V incandescent bulbs. After reading the small print in the installation guide, I soon realised that 1.5V bulbs don't like 16V punching through them! A query out to the Yahoo Loksound forum was answered by Marcus Ammann, followed up by photos of his installation. These are a great reference source. By all accounts it looks as though I will now have to do a bit of customising of the lights on the 44 by replacing them with LEDs. At this point I am also wondering whether I also install the red/white marker light LEDs as well. Hopefully Marcus will reply to my email over the weekend on this matter. I can then place an order with DCC Concepts for the required LEDs. Looks like a few more weeks at the minimum before I have the 44 Class operational.

I chased up MRRC yesterday and they hadn't heard anything from ESU. Gary was going to make another phone call. So the EL Class is still in limbo. Probably the only thing I can with this project is to look at the wiring again with the purpose of reducing the amount of extraneous wire lengths present so that the shell will fit back on. Maybe this will be next week's activity while waiting for the 44 Class bits and pieces to arrive.

Unsure what this weekend will bring modelling wise. Hopefully a couple of hours somewhere, doing something!