Did I mention, I love Stewart?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I picked up a cheapy Soundtraxx decoder at Timonium yesterday (seems kinda strange, ‘cheap’ and ‘Soundtraxx’ but it was only $38!), with the idea of experimetning, or maybe using it for my Stewart dummy B unit. I did a quicky hookup with a 10 watt resistor for a motor load, and the speaker and cap. Clip leads to the red and black to my track, and - it works! Not bad, considering the speaker was just sitting there, no proper baffle or anything. So, I decided to pop the shell of the B unit to see how hard it will be to attach power pickups. Why - insanely easy, because the copy pickup strips are supplied with even the dummy!!! I just popped the trucks apart and soldered on some short lengths of black decoder wire to each fo the 4 copper strips, reassembled, and now I have power pickups! That’s about as far as I got today, maybe I’ll work on building a speaker box if I have any good size styrene handy.

–Randy

2

Way to go, Randy! Do you sometimes feel like you’re The Man? [(-D]

3

Sometimes. But then the only speakers they had in stock were a bit too small. So it’s going to be yet another one of those projects that’s started but not finished. I don’t think I an go the 3 speaker route like the one on the Litchfield Station site, not and fit that 10 watt resistor in there that’s the motor load. I could put it in my RS-3 - the speaker I have is narrow enough to fit int he RS-3 hood, but the motor drive on these Soundtraxx decoders is NOT good, I’d rather not have the buzzing motor disrupt the sound.

–Randy

4

Randy,

Why don’t you talk to Tim at Empire Northern. Maybe he can cut you a good deal on a better speaker - plus the baflle.

Tom