LifeLike SW1200 - Suggestions for DCC/Sound “Tender”

[nkalanaga]

If you're freelancing the slug, any switcher that rolls well will work.  The NP slugs were built from old Baldwins!  Just make sure it has good pickup, since that seems to your main reason for building it.  Another SW would work fine.

[Dwight in Toronto]

It’s been a few weeks since a few of us were discussing this topic.  Just wanted to offer a quick update.

I had settled on the ‘slug’ idea, along with the concept that it would be a dummy unit, tethered to the SW1200, and that it would encompass the ESU Nano and speaker.  I did not have any luck finding a raggedy-a$$ LifeLike or Bachmann switcher at train shows, BUT … while searching for something else, I serendipitously just stumbled on an old shell that I forgot I had. 

This pic shows the intended LifeLike SW1200 ‘mother’ loco in the background, along with the donor shell, a couple of old loco trucks from my parts box (they may, at one time, have even been with that shell for all I know), and the ESU Nano decoder. 

Over the last few weeks, I have been gathering and studying photos of real-world and model slugs.  Suffice to say that the variety of configurations is limited only by the imaginations of the chop shops who built these things.  So, with care and patience, I think that I can surgically alter the shell into a reasonable representation of a slug body. 

However, what I don’t have is a cast metal frame of any sort.  Cobbling together some form of chassis that can somehow accomodate those trucks, support the reconfigured shell, and have reasonable amount of mass/weight, seems like quite a challenge.  At this point, I’m at a bit of a loss how best to go about tackling this part of the build. 

Regardless, I can make a start on cutting down the shell, and will continue mulling over emerging ideas on how to construct a chassis.  As always, any suggestions are warmly welcomed. 

(I’ve spent ten times as much time trying to get this photo right side up, as I spent composing the above message - despite some good coaching by Peteski some months ago, I’m afraid that photo attaching on TRW still has me stumped - sorry guys).

[cbroughton67]

@Dwight in Toronto  The Life-Like SW1200 is the same locomotive as the Life-Like SW9. You might want to give @Jim Starbuck 's sound install in the SW9 a look. https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=45574.0
Chris

[lock4244]

It’s been a few weeks since a few of us were discussing this topic.  Just wanted to offer a quick update.

I had settled on the ‘slug’ idea, along with the concept that it would be a dummy unit, tethered to the SW1200, and that it would encompass the ESU Nano and speaker.  I did not have any luck finding a raggedy-a$$ LifeLike or Bachmann switcher at train shows, BUT … while searching for something else, I serendipitously just stumbled on an old shell that I forgot I had. 

This pic shows the intended LifeLike SW1200 ‘mother’ loco in the background, along with the donor shell, a couple of old loco trucks from my parts box (they may, at one time, have even been with that shell for all I know), and the ESU Nano decoder. 

Over the last few weeks, I have been gathering and studying photos of real-world and model slugs.  Suffice to say that the variety of configurations is limited only by the imaginations of the chop shops who built these things.  So, with care and patience, I think that I can surgically alter the shell into a reasonable representation of a slug body. 

However, what I don’t have is a cast metal frame of any sort.  Cobbling together some form of chassis that can somehow accomodate those trucks, support the reconfigured shell, and have reasonable amount of mass/weight, seems like quite a challenge.  At this point, I’m at a bit of a loss how best to go about tackling this part of the build. 

Regardless, I can make a start on cutting down the shell, and will continue mulling over emerging ideas on how to construct a chassis.  As always, any suggestions are warmly welcomed. 

(I’ve spent ten times as much time trying to get this photo right side up, as I spent composing the above message - despite some good coaching by Peteski some months ago, I’m afraid that photo attaching on TRW still has me stumped - sorry guys).

You could just modify an existing shell to be a slug, sort of like CP's half assed slug conversions of SW's and a single GP9. Very little to no mods to the body relative to CN or CR conversions.

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[John]

Dwight - this is what we did for @RockGp40  --- he provided a ConCor frame and we stuck this on top .. might work for you to fit a sound decoder in there

[Dwight in Toronto]

Chris - thanks for the pointer re: Jim Starbuck’s tutorial … I have studied every single post, from beginning to end of that topic, at least half a dozen times over the last six months.  I’ve also since had some terrific additional input from Jim, John Columbo and others.  However, I didn’t have the confidence to undertake the re-motoring and re-gearing intricacies that were involved, hence the thought of going with more of a sound-car, and hence, the slug, approach.

Lock4244 - finding a “fixer upper” SW shell was my preferred approach, but I kept striking out at this past winter’s various train shows.  I literally stumbled on the old GP-40 shell (I think that’s what it is) in a long forgotten parts box, so thought “nothing to lose” and started messing around with that.

John - those pics look great!  What you suggest is pretty much along the same lines as what I’m trying.  The big difference is that I don’t have any frame nor chassis to go with my donor shell.

Great stuff guys; thanks for all the input.   I’ve made a bit of progress over the last few days, and will post an update photo shortly (which will again end up 90 degrees sideways, no doubt!). 

Until then, suffice to say that I’ve:
- cut down the GP-40 shell into a quite passable slug configuration
- made good headway on disassembling, lubing, restoring those old powered trucks
- came up with a novel method of joining the trucks to a “chassis” - in short, I’ve cut and shaped a small strip of copper pc/perf board to span the space between, and attach to, the truck retainer mounts
- the short length of pc board between the trucks has great potential for soldering smd resistors for the various led’s, serving as a power bus for the red & black pickups from both the mother SW and the slug trucks (16 wheels in all), intermediate connections between the Nano output wires and the ‘tether’ wiring between the two locos, etc. 
- roughed out an ESU 11 x 15mm speaker + enclosure positioned between the trucks (ie - fuel tank/air reservoir area)

I must say, it’s been fun so far, and it’s getting kinda exciting.  As I mentioned, I’ll try to post a pic or two soon.

[lock4244]

It's a fuel tender, but was an MILW GP40 once and if you remove the piping and fuel tank could easily make a decent looking slug.

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[Dwight in Toronto]

As mentioned in my last post, here's two more pics of progress to date.  (fingers crossed - photo attachments don't cooperate with me very well).

The first shows my make-shift “chassis”, which is nothing more than a small strip of pc board spanning the space between the trucks.  I was trying to think of a strong, rigid, non-metallic material to use here, and this is what came to mind.  The added benefit is that the perf board can do double-duty, in that the various led resistors, led leads, orange & gray motor leads from the SW "mother", speaker wires etc can all be soldered to the board, along with the corresponding wires from the ESU Nano decoder.  The red & black track power wires from the two trucks demonstrate what I'm trying to explain (and later on, additional red & black leads from the SW1200, as well as those from the decoder, can be readily soldered to the same 'busses', if you will).  Conceptually, it seems like it might be easier to solder each tether wire from the switcher to a point on the board, and do the same for each corresponding wire from the decoder.  Might make it easier for servicing down the road (eg - decoder replacement), and it just feels like it might be better than struggling to run continuous wires directly from the decoder in the slug, all the way through to the switcher.  I dunno.  Thoughts?

The second pic is a crude depiction of what the end result might look like.  Note the ESU 11 x 15mm speaker/enclosure positioned in the vicinity of where it would end up between the trucks (after receiving a bit of cosmetic detail to make it look more like a fuel tank or air reservoir).

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[nkalanaga]

You wouldn't have to remove the fuel tank.  For a switcher and slug, tractive effort is more important than horsepower, and tractive effort is limited by weight.  Just fill the tank with ballast, and save the work to remove it!

[Dwight in Toronto]

nkalanga - I don’t plan to remove the fuel tank.  Conversely, I need to ADD the fuel tank. 

Although I will indeed need to add weight somehow, the second pic attached above shows the ESU speaker/enclosure which is intended to be installed under the pc chassis, midships between the trucks.  As mentioned, I intend to disguise the speaker enclosure to make it look more like an air reservoir. 

As an aside - I continue to be frustrated with sideways photo attachments.  Peteski pointed out that iPhone/iPad photos (which I use) are problematic in this regard, and that PC computer attachments work better.  My preceding post was done on my computer, but the photos that I emailed to myself from my iPad still came out sideways (not a surprise, now that I think about it).  I just can’t figure out how to post properly oriented pics.

[peteski]

nkalanga - I don’t plan to remove the fuel tank.  Conversely, I need to ADD the fuel tank. 

Although I will indeed need to add weight somehow, the second pic attached above shows the ESU speaker/enclosure which is intended to be installed under the pc chassis, midships between the trucks.  As mentioned, I intend to disguise the speaker enclosure to make it look more like an air reservoir. 

As an aside - I continue to be frustrated with sideways photo attachments.  Peteski pointed out that iPhone/iPad photos (which I use) are problematic in this regard, and that PC computer attachments work better.  My preceding post was done on my computer, but the photos that I emailed to myself from my iPad still came out sideways (not a surprise, now that I think about it).  I just can’t figure out how to post properly oriented pics.

The explanation of the wrong orientation is in the Admin section. I'm still planning to contact you off-forum once I can spend some time to compose an informative email.  I'll get you into the Gallery eventually.  As for fixing the images, if you have a Windows PC, you can simply open each image in Photo Viewer (which is usually what opens them by default when you double click on any jpg file), then rotate them using the circular arrows on the bottom of the photo viewer. That is on Windows 7, but I'm pretty sure even newer version of Photo Viewer is capable of that. Photo Viewer saves the rotated version automatically.

If you want more control over the process and some additional editing capabilities (like cropping), Infranview (https://www.irfanview.com/)is a good freeware program for that.  GIMP is another one, but that is much more advanced.  I pretty much edit every photo before uploading them to TRW. If not for anything else, to resize them to be 1024 or 1200 pixels across (to reduce the file size).

[Dwight in Toronto]

Thanks Pete.  I did rotate the jpeg’s on my PC before posting, but they still showed up the same.

I do have properly rotated photos saved in ‘My Gallery’, and in ‘My Images’, but cannot find a way to link to them for attaching to messages.  Looking forward to hearing from you, but take your time - no big hurry. 

[wazzou]

Thanks Pete.  I did rotate the jpeg’s on my PC before posting, but they still showed up the same.

I do have properly rotated photos saved in ‘My Gallery’, and in ‘My Images’, but cannot find a way to link to them for attaching to messages.  Looking forward to hearing from you, but take your time - no big hurry.

If the photos are properly oriented and in your gallery or "My Images", just click on the photo and scroll down below the expanded image that opened and copy all of the text in the box that says BB Code to the left of it and then paste that text in your message.

[Dwight in Toronto]

Holy smokes wazzou … I think your wee description might just be the ticket!






Well I’ll be darned - happy happy joy joy - thanks man!

[peteski]

Looks like you've got it Dwight!   Peteski's intervention not needed.   I assumed that you have read https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=42854.0
The Photo gallery is not very inuitive.