Update on the design stage. ( A peak into our engineering office.)

     We are making progress on the needed design changes to the mechanism for these popular models. We have hand built a variety of samples, testing various design options and here is what we have found to date.

     The most complex issue was where to put a speaker for the optional Sound Decoder.

     We discovered the smallest speaker that would give us any quality of sound was 14mm wide, which is narrower than the main body cavity. The 2nd choice was to put a small round speaker down in the belly fuel tank area. But that did not give us much sound volume, plus we had to remove a significant amount of weight from the frame area to fit in a speaker.

     So that left the tender caviety for mounting the Sound Decoder and Speaker. A sample using the 14mm wide speaker produced very good results, as we were able to use the Tender caviety to act as the "Sound Chamber" for the Speaker....

     Ok, well next issue was how to we run all the wires necessary from the decoder in the "tender" to the main chassis, we played with various ideas of a draw bar made of Circuit board material used as a conduit for the various wires needed between the main loco chassis and tender, but this proved unreliable in practice.

     Then the lightbulb blinked on, (well it was more like a slap on the back of the head from a very experienced DCC modeler) and we realized we did not need a bunch of wires between the main loco chassis and the tender with the Sound unit. What we had to do was just put a "dual mode decoder board" in the main loco chassis to control the motor spead and lighting, and then put a 2nd decoder in the tender that was just for the Sound.

So here is a summery of the Advantages of designing the model with an option for a seperate Decoder in the tender area.

• With using a dual model Board in the main chassis unit (would work both for DC or DCC), we did not need to use a socket assembly which saved space.
  
• This required less of the die-cast weight to be removed for the electronics in the main locomotive chassis, and will allow the units to continue to pull a lot of cars (which they were famous for)
  
• One basic chassis, out of the box, would run on DC or DCC controlled trackage.
  
• No ugly wiring between main locomotive chassis and Tender.
  
• For those who want to run in "DC" only and do not desire "Sound", we can offer the tender for the Gas Tubine as an "Add-on" item for just "DC" running. As you will see below, the Tender's are offered as a separate Item so you can choose either a straight "DC" (No Sound) tender, or a "DCC" (With Sound) Tender.