Post by xcandiottix on Nov 9, 2014 17:09:36 GMT -5
Hi All,
I recently purchased 2 Athearn Genesis SD-60M's with sound off of ebay. I got them on the layout and could not get them to work correctly for anything. As it turns out, the stock DCC board in these do not play well with the NCE system at the club. I therefore upgraded to a Tsunami Soundtraxx TSU-GN1000. Again, I went back to the layout and the locos ran better but still very inconsistently. Apparently, in this production run Athearn painted under the rivet of the conductive plates on the trucks so power pickup was a major issue. I sanded down some of the painted areas and ran wires directly from the decoder to the trucks. Now the locos started running much much better. However, the plastic handrails were in no mood to be handled this much and started popping off or breaking. I ordered Smokey Valley kit 210 (Handrails and Stancion kit for the SD-60M) and have been slowly sanding down, straightening, and cleaning up the stanchions. I ordered a few tubes of .015 phosphor bronze wire (part #1102) from Tichy Train Group for the handrails and am bending them myself. I also ordered surface mount leds (Golden White Mini Surface wired in Ditch configuration part# 22-GW603-WT06-D), 6" headlight lenses (W-235-341), 1.2K-1/8W resistors, and surface mounts with light shield (part# 4-5002-GW-1S) from Ulrich models. I am upgrading to Kadee long shank center set whisker metal couplers (part #146).
I learned that getting the GN1000 decoder was actually a waste because it has a voltage regulator to step down the lightbulb voltage to 1.5v. Since the leds need more voltage than this I have to wire up to the +14v common. If you are using LEDs, you don't gain much with the direct replacement board in my opinion.
I have a couple of questions:
Thanks!
I recently purchased 2 Athearn Genesis SD-60M's with sound off of ebay. I got them on the layout and could not get them to work correctly for anything. As it turns out, the stock DCC board in these do not play well with the NCE system at the club. I therefore upgraded to a Tsunami Soundtraxx TSU-GN1000. Again, I went back to the layout and the locos ran better but still very inconsistently. Apparently, in this production run Athearn painted under the rivet of the conductive plates on the trucks so power pickup was a major issue. I sanded down some of the painted areas and ran wires directly from the decoder to the trucks. Now the locos started running much much better. However, the plastic handrails were in no mood to be handled this much and started popping off or breaking. I ordered Smokey Valley kit 210 (Handrails and Stancion kit for the SD-60M) and have been slowly sanding down, straightening, and cleaning up the stanchions. I ordered a few tubes of .015 phosphor bronze wire (part #1102) from Tichy Train Group for the handrails and am bending them myself. I also ordered surface mount leds (Golden White Mini Surface wired in Ditch configuration part# 22-GW603-WT06-D), 6" headlight lenses (W-235-341), 1.2K-1/8W resistors, and surface mounts with light shield (part# 4-5002-GW-1S) from Ulrich models. I am upgrading to Kadee long shank center set whisker metal couplers (part #146).
I learned that getting the GN1000 decoder was actually a waste because it has a voltage regulator to step down the lightbulb voltage to 1.5v. Since the leds need more voltage than this I have to wire up to the +14v common. If you are using LEDs, you don't gain much with the direct replacement board in my opinion.
I have a couple of questions:
- In the Smokey Valley kit there are 14 black plastic stanchion shaped pieces. What are these for?
- Some of the stanchion tops (the "C" portion) have cracked off. I'm now short a couple of stanchions. Any ideas? I have extra long ones I could cut shorter maybe.
- When I glued in the headlight lens, some of the plastic/paint of the shell melted and gave a couple of lenses a greenish hue. I used Tamiya extra thin cement and used as little as possible. Is there a better way? Can I paint the lens with a stippling of silver to try and fix this?
- The Athearn speaker sits in a screwed together metal "box" on the frame. I'm sure it isn't sealed so the sound quality can be better I'm guessing. Can I fix this or should I replace? If replace, what is recommended?
- I'm modeling this around 1996. Are there any additional details I can add to this unit that fits this time period that Athearn didn't do / didn't do well?
- Any other recommendations or ideas to continue detailing these?
Thanks!