But it did! The legendary, spoken of in whispers, and dreaded Proto-Sound 1 “Three Clanks of DOOM!”
It happened last weekend at the VTCA Depot’s open house. I was running my 4-4-0 “General”
So, I took the shell off the tender (which I hadn’t done since I installed a BCR) and saw THIS:
Yikes! I hadn’t seen a mass of electronics like that in years! After a part search with MTH I saw the controller board was out of stock, not a big surprise considering the age of the locomotive. I wondered if I could still utilize the sound board but not after I saw it had FANGS!
See 'em on the right sticking down? Jeez! More on sound later.
(I’m saving it just in case of a sound board failure on “Texas.”)
Anyway, I had a Dallee Electronics drop-in e-unit on hand I could install to restore conventional operation, which is all I do anyway. There was no room “under the hood” in the locomotive but mounting it in the tender would be no problem. It was easy to determine the motor leads that run through the tender-to-locomotive cable so after that I followed the Dallee directions for wiring the unit. It looked like this after the install.
(The only circuit board in the locomotive is a stand-alone constant-voltage board that draws power independently from the center rail and feeds it to the headlight and the smoke unit. There was no problem with that one so I left it alone.)
For sound, I installed a Williams whistle and bell unit I had on hand.
Unfortunately the Williams unit’s no longer available so this is the last time I’ll be using one. Too bad.
The wire nuts in the previous picture were just a little too big to hold tight so I substituted shrink tubing, which is why you’re not seeing them now.
(Honestly, I didn’t care much for that PS-1 electronic whistle, it sounded more like a Canada goose with bronchitis than a real steam whistle!)
The whole procedure turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. The “General” is back in action again! Whew!
