I learned about adding wipers to DCC/sound installs in steam locos from a skillful list-buddy of mine, a MMR from Australia named Laurie McLean. You may have seen some of his videos before, where this wizard of DCC works his arts on many a neat little loco, and I’ll link to a couple at the end of these posts.
Here I want to document my wiper installs for a forum-friend here, NP2626, who is contemplated his own installs. This will be mainly pics, but feel free to ask for more details or explanations for what’s seen in the pics. While not particularly photogenic, I did seems to improve some each time. I’ll do the Westside C-25 first, then post my Sunset K-28 and K-36 in subsequent posts just to kepe things organized.
Here is a pic of my very first wiper on the C-25, a somewhat flawed effort to do two at once. It was too long and delicate, but worked until it suffered the ignominious fate of many wipers, snagging.
I went to the trouble of drilling and tapping a screw to mount the wiper base. Any more, I either CA them or use an existing screw. The base is simply a small bit of PCB tie material that provide a mount, insulation, and a place to solder the lead and the wiper. The wiper itself is formed from Tichy .010" phosphor-bronze wire (293-1101).
Here’s how it looks today, with just one operational wiper on the loco. I’ve also had them on the 2nd and 4th axles, but right now it’s running OK with just the one, so it’s all good. The objective is to add pickups for the black/left side, which on most steamers isn’t used at all, as they are insulated so as to only pickup on the red/right side.
Next is my Sunset K-28, where the same general set of goals guided the install. Here’s the underside of the loco and it has 3 wipers on the black/left side.
Note that the wipers here are Tichy .020 P-B wire. It’s an experiment I probably won’t repeat, as they’re just not as flexible. They are more robust, though.
Great idea for a thread, Mike! Thanks for doing this.
The TCS Keep Alives run from $21.50 to $26.35 and can be a part of their decoders. The Current Keeper from Soundtraxx is $19.95. These prices are from an online discounter.
Yeah, the prices on keep-alives aren’t outrageous, but space in a narrowgauge tender is…wait for it…priceless.
I’m certain someone will come along and tell us they stuffed everything in there anyway. More power to ya…but I reached my patience with stuffing just adding the Tsu, speaker and enclosure.
George at Sountraxx told me I could use the tender body as a speaker enclosure. My guess is that you would need to seal the joint between the body and chassie, to get this to work right. I think thi is because sound from the back of the speaker is out of phase with the soiund from the front?!?
Yeah, that is possible. I won’t argue with George, he knows his stuff.[8-|]
He’s absolutely right about the need to isolate the sound coming from the back from that coming from the front, which is what the speaker enclosure does.
But considering how many little openings there are in the typical brass tender, it could be a bit of a challenge. Sometimes things tend to rattle and buzz with brass, too. That can all be overcome. The sealing of the tender shell to the frame is probably the trickiest part. When I go to shoving all the wires, etc in to button everything up, having gooey stuff or a gasket to worry about would probably drive me nuts at that point in the process.[:'(]
I’ve added the TCS Keep Alive modules to many Loksound and Tsunami decoders. They can be added to ANY decoder really. You just have to find the positive (use the blue light wire) and negative (input diode) connection.
As for finding room in a narrow gauge tender - I’ve installed a Loksound Micro decoder, speaker and an ESU stay alive module (not to mention lights) in a Hi-Rail truck … I’m sure they would fit in your tender ! [swg]
When installing a speaker in a brass tender, I always make a separate enclosure to mount the speaker in. The speaker is sealed to this enclosure. I then mount the enclosure / speaker to the floor of the tender. The size of the speaker enclosure is important. The speaker needs to be able to compress the air on the back to some degree to be optimally efficient, otherwise the cone is just vibrating in free air and resonating within the enclosure. The whole inside of a tender cavity (sealed or not) is not an ideal enclosure for a speaker.
I suspect George thinks that way because Soundtraxx engineers the tender as part of the sound system on the Blackstones. Get away from that and the possibilities are a bit more hazy, especially with brass. But it seems to work plenty fine on my K-27 and C-19 locos.
I’m sure that would be fine if the interiors were DESIGNED for sound - the majority of brass aren’t.
Using the entire tender shell as the enclosure would be like mounting your home stereo speakers in the living room wall and relying on the adjacent bathroom to be the enclosure ! Sure, they would work, and probably sound “ok”, but it would be far from an optimal installation.
Sorry for veering off-topic - will save further discussion for a different thread …
Yeah, I didn’t start the thread with the idea of making it one-up-manship a la mode. It was to illustrate something for a fellow forum member. This is the sort of thing that discourages people from posting much of anything, because someone jumps in with, “You should have done it differently and entirely better…”
Which usually works better in it’s own thread, I’ll agree.
Not sounding miffed here, really, but it’s a good example to reflect on about why some things inadvertently (I’m sure) rub people the wrong way.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch[C):-)]…
Still hoping for others who use wipers to post up pics of their wiper installs, provided they haven’t been discouraged from even bothering.
