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My attempt to fit TTS to Railroad Tornado


37lover

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A liitle bit of text and a few photos showing how I fitted a TTS decoder and speaker to the Tender of a Hornby Railroad Tornado.

I elected to fit the speaker underneath the coal facing upwards, The underside of the tender top is not flat so I cut a thick piece of plastikard, put a bead of Milliputty around the speaker hole, and then applied a liberal coating of epoxy to fix it all in place.

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I drilled a few holes to help the expoxy bond to the plastikard.

/media/tinymce_upload/8fe2bd41ef0fb1acb312404b64e2ffc0.JPGThen after drilling a few more holes from inside to outline the speaker I drilled a lot more from the top between the lumps of coal. I painted a coat of matt black acrylic over the coal and was very pleased that the holes were not very noticeable.

/media/tinymce_upload/361e7448b86423a2d73600e58398b650.JPGI fitted a mini plug and socket to aid if I need to separate the tender and loco in the future. The plug/socket fits through the tender coal shute so isn't visible when running.

 

I was using fine decoder cables but couldn't get the body back on the chassis when the cables ran along the roof so ended up routing them inside the body just above the top of the wheels. The flywheel stops about 8mm short of the cab bulkhead so I used this space to get the cables back up to the roof [where I had already drilled holes!]

/media/tinymce_upload/7277dc902954f3296225e22299fc96ea.JPG

/media/tinymce_upload/feb2c2e8850958a45852aa339fe715d7.JPGThe decoder is slotted into the void under the double chimney.

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Fired it up last night and was delighted it all works. Hope you appreciate the report, I'll try and answer any questions but cannot post during the day [at work!]

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RAF96,

No, neither brave nor skilled enough to do that, I cut the original wires about half way and that left enough length to solder new wires. I put heat shrink around each wire and then another slightly bigger piece around both to try and give some support as I thought the solder connection to the decoder was a bit weak. The connection is near the far end of the decoder so I am hoping that the yellow heat shrink, which was lightly shrunk at each end [just enough to stop the decoder sliding out], will help keep everything together. I also used a 1mm drill [just checked with my vernier caliper]. I've taken a photo where the holes are very visible but in real life they are much harder to see - photo needs Adam to approve!

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I have one loco coal load made from the black stones used in fish tanks glued into the tender and it is too hard to drill, must be quartz or black diamond I reckon.

I couldn’t remove it either without destroying the tender so I gave up and put a sugar cube in the loco. Lessons learned from my early days of loco ‘improvement’.

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