It has been sometime since I had the opportunity to install an RCS battery R/C system in a Bachmann Shay along with Sierra sound.
I did not have a digital camera when I did the last one.
Recently a customer asked me to update his older version Shay with the new metal trucks. At the same time I was asked to add RCS battery R/C and Sierra sound.
The following is not meant to be an exact “how to do it”, rather it is how I went about it with the very few wiring changes to the loco and only one small modification to the dummy coal load.
I wanted to make the job as simple as possible for the average LS modeler.
To start with I placed the loco upside down in the original packing material. This reduces greatly any possible damage to the details when handling the loco.
After I removed the old trucks I drilled an extra wiring access hole in the floor for the Black/Red/Yellow RX-8 cable which as it turns out was not necessary as the RX-8 cable could also fit through the original floor hole. I also drilled a small hole for the antenna wire.
I then mounted the RX-8, RF-CHK pcb and the RELAY-U under the floor as shown.
The RF-CHK pcb is the method of suppression I used for the rear truck. The rear truck wiring was removed from the tender and is now fed directly into the RF-CHK under the floor.
I slightly modified the under floor cover so that I could get the three motor control wires from the RCS ELITE-3 out near the rail.
The RELAY-U provides a constant voltage for the Bachmann electronics that reverses polarity (including the lights) with the direction change of the RCS ELITE-3 Motor Driver. This saves a lot loco of rewiring. I re-routed the original pair of wires from the firebox to tender and lengthened them to reach the RELAY-U at the rear of the floor. I drilled an elongated hole near the RELAY-U for the control wires coming from the ELITE-3 in the tender.
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