VR Walker railmotor -- VERY NICE!

The day after the last post the Loksound decoder arrived from dccsound. I had to wait until the weekend before I could go anywhere near the shed. Saturday arrived as did some constant rain. Perfect weather for shed time if only the missus hadn't gone out for the morning for a hairdresser appointment (I think it is a devilish plan to have some child free time!). Anyway the boys kept me busy keeping them entertained. By midmorning it was time to take them somewhere. So off we went to the local games arcade down at the shops. We spent about an hour and a half of quality Dad time on the computer games, pin ball machines, and other distractions. And it only cost me $20!

The afternoon arrived and so did the missus. So having spent quality time with the boys in the morning, it was now my turn to have 'me' time. As it was still showery, the grass was too wet to cut, so the shed and my recent purchases beckoned. I put the railmotor on Lachlan's DC layout for a couple of hours of running in between some other things like lunch and a nanna nap! It did look good. Now it was time to put the decoder in. This model certainly was designed better than the 73, as plenty of pre-positioning for DCC. The 21 pin drop in decoder had no problems. The speaker install was the most time consuming. Now for a test of the sound. Sounded great. As all this was done on the central motor carriage it was time to attach the end carriages. This done, I turned the power back on then the decoder. The speaker started sounding a bleeping sound. Then I detected the faint wiff of doom....I mean fried electronics. That wasn't good. I looked a bit further and couldn't find the problem. The 'alarm' might have been a short circuit alarm, but I couldn't see anything obvious. I turned the power back on watching the decoder at the same time. FLASH and POP a microsecond  later and the decoder looked stuffed. Oh no, not again!

Well I made contact with dccsound and Mike was very accomodating. I have sent a photo of the decoder and he will check it out. A warranty replacement could be coming my way. Time will tell.

I also soldered up the replacement sugar cube speaker to the 73 and cranked it up. No crackling. Hooray! Now I just have to finish the conversion!

This afternoon I went around to one of Lachlan's friend's house as he was over for a birthday party. The dad of the friend is also into modelling but I hadn't seen his layout for about 12 months. He warned me not much had happened landscape wise as he had decided to convert to DCC and re-position some track. He has purchased an ESU ECos system which is very nice. Everything in the one little unit, including wireless to smartphone! Pretty much like JMRI and others all in the one unit. Perfect for a lone modeller. He also showed me his replacement DCC turntable (Walthers Cornerstone 90') operating. Very nice and smooth operation compared to the old analogue models. 

Well that is about it for this week.