Rob773

I cut the bare ends off of the speaker wires before I powered the decoder up so they were not a problem. However, not insulating the board before powering up was a bad omission, I hold my hands up!

Rallymatt, the board you're referring to appears to be ESU's ref 51996. I've done a quick search on Google and it doesn't appear to be available in the UK. All the prices are either in Dollars or Euros.

The two wires come with the ESU adapter, apparently for connecting to a speaker! I wasn't aware of the PluX16 to Next18 adapter board from ESU, I'll look it up! Thanks very much.

Thank you all for your responses. This has been a steep learning curve for me and I now realise I was making some very silly assumptions in my original message when I thought the pin configuration in a PluX22 and a 21-pin MTC would be the same! I have now gone ahead and bought an ESU PluX12 to Next18 adapter lead and an R7345 Next18 decoder. I tried installing them in the loco today and everything seemed fine to start with. The decoder communicated with the HM7000 app on my iPad, I linked the device and even downloaded the 9F sound profile SD026 into it. I even got sound from the built-in speaker in the tender but as soon as I commanded the loco to move, the sound stopped and I noticed that the decoder was very hot! The decoder is now not communicating with the iPad and gets very hot every time I power it up. If anyone has any ideas what could have happened, I would be grateful. I wondered if I may have got the orientation wrong with either of the connectors but if this was the case, why did it initially work ok? Could it perhaps be that the loco motor was pulling too much current? Do you think the decoder is redeemable or is it fried? The fact that it's getting hot and not communicating sounds like it's kaput, which is annoying as I only received it today! Any views or advice would be welcome, thanks very much.

I would like to return to the original question of whether it's possible to fit an R7322 21-pin TXS decoder in a Bachmann loco with a Plux22 socket? I have just bought Bachmann's 9F ref 32-859A, assuming I would be able to fit an R7322 in it with no problem, like I was able to when I bought their Gresley V2 ref 35-202 a year ago. There is mention of adapters in this thread but no detailed information about whether they exist and, if they do, where to get them from. Is there not an adapter with long pins which fits into both sockets? I'd be really grateful if anyone can help, thanks very much.

Thank you very much for your comments. I've gone ahead and removed the weight from the right-hand side tank, as recommended by the instructions in the loco box, and I have managed to fit an R7336 8-pin TXS decoder into it but not with a speaker (I have an R7336 with a broken speaker socket so this is what I've fitted). I tried a speaker with the smallest enclosure and it fits perfectly into the cut-out in the weight in the left-hand side tank, but the enclosure fouls the rear driving wheel when you try to refit the body, so I've concluded there's no way to fit a speaker without removing the left-hand weight (although I've not explored the possibility of fitting one in the bunker under the removable coal load but assume this would require drilling a hole somewhere to poke the wires through!). The loco is now more prone to wheelspin, especially up gradients, but the power pick-up doesn't seem too bad. It traverses my Peco double slips at 25% traction without stalling.

Indeed I would predict that this loco would benefit from a power bank, although there are pickups on the rear bogie, as well as the driving wheels. However, I can't imagine that removing the tank weight would be a good idea as this loco is light enough as it is and I'm sure would suffer from loss of traction if the weight was removed.

Thank you all for your comments, I will revisit the loco instructions and then see if I can find a supplier that actually has an 8-pin TXS in stock! Cheers, Rob

Has anyone on here successfully fitted an 8-pin sound decoder and speaker in the R3531 M7 0-4-4 tank loco? The loco's instructions suggest there are cut-outs in the side tanks to accommodate these but I have found that the cut-out that seems to be for the decoder is about 2 mm shorter than the decoder PCB and it doesn't fit, yet there is another cut-out in the other tank which would take a speaker! I am assuming that fitting an R7336 is impossible and am therefore waiting for the R7335 to be released which I believe is a much smaller PCB. I'd be interested to know if anyone has managed to fit an R7336 and, if so, how? Thank you. Regards, Rob