Tornado Special Edition and TTS Sound Decoder

[Mickky]

I have fitted my Tornado with a tts decoder and used a sugare cube speaker, both stuck to a piece of plasticard and inserted into the smoke box. Just poked holes in the chimney and all works and sounds a treat.

[ColinB]

I recently had an issue with a P12 DCC sound decoder not doing sound (there is a post about it on this forum), so I am not surprised other people have had issues with other decoders. I eventually sent it back to Hornby and today I received a fully working one back. As to fitting the sound module into the loco, I found that the small sugar cube speakers from "YouChoos" work just great. If I remember right, on the Tornado there is a load of room underneath the chimney, where you can fit the DCC module. The thing I like about the "YouChoos" speakers is that they have a plastic base so are really easy to insulate. You definitely do not want any of the speaker chassis toaching the loco chassis, in case the speaker chassis is connected to one of the speaker connections (this will effectively kill the sound module, believe me I have done it). What I also did with my Tornedo, was buy an A1/A3 tender bottom spare part. These are really cheap about £3.00, from this you can extract the pickups, and fit them to the tender (my Tornado did not have tender pickups). There are even the fittings to fit them. Then either buy the Hornby 4 wire lead and socket, or "hardwire" it, and you have a much more reliable loco.