I’ve been working on a BM annie conversion to DCC, and it has required a cosmetic conversion to “oil” (from coal). It’s been a struggle thus far, but I’m finally getting a handle on the project.
The long T-day weekend gave me time to get back into this, starting with the wiring. I won’t bore y’all with all the mistakes… it took 3 installs of the DCC board before I got it all to fit. And for every wire tie that lasted, I’m sure I cut 5. Stuff like that. But in the end, all worked out well, and here’s the results, starting with the tender.
Since I’d like to do some detailing on this loco down the road, and will need to get everything apart, I connectorized the components on the tender and loco bodies, using cheap JST connectors such as this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013WTV270
Here’s the loco, showing the final resting place of the board, which is held down by a velcro-like product.
The smokebox area turned out to be a nice place to wire-nut and coil up the bulk of the wires.
After putting it all back together, I realized I’d forgotten something, and took the boiler back off. I did that 4 times. After that last reassembly, when the back headlight didn’t work, I thought I’d scream. But fortunately, I’d just forgotten to plug the tender into the loco. Phew!
About that main connector, and how it gets connected…
I’m not super thrilled to get on my hands and knees every time I have to plug those little tender connectors into the backhead area; and with this loco, there were going to be 3 connectors. Because of one of them being way over-stressed (see discussion above), I decided to do something completely different.
I needed wires for rail power (new tender pickups), rear headlight, and speaker. After looking at various options, I got an 8-pin mini-din extension cord, with #28 awg wire. I used all of the wires: pairs for rear truck, front truck, light and speaker. The connectors are pre-made with the cable, so all I needed to do was cut the cord and strip it.
The connectors are housed in the tender, and my plan for that involved the “conversion” of the tender to oil, as I brought up on another thread / forum. This here is a real hack job though, completely unlike the beautiful work shown there. For this, I needed a removable cover, and soon; and I’ll have to leave any further detailing for another day.
The first step was to unscrew the “coal” and cut away the spillage that Bachmann molded into the body.
Next was fashioning an acrylic L-shaped cover, that has a notch for the rear headlight post and another (not shown) for the cable to go through (at the deck).
I glued on some styrene angles, and drilled for & installed a brass grab rail to help me lift the thing away.
The prototype had a similar doghouse on top which was, I suppose, to cover the oil fill port.
I had a tender toolbox in the junk bin. Too small, but close enough.
Here’s how it looks with the cable made up.
And with the tank top on.
Looking at the backhead, there’s now no exposed connectors. I cut a bit of rubber sheet to go around the cable, and placed it inside the frame. There’s also a new small notch just above the cable, to enlarge the existing hole (where the switches were) for passing thru the loco’s connector.
Here’s the schematic:
Well, that’s about it. The Econami board runs & sounds great, and I’m really happy with how this turned out. At a later date, as mentioned earlier, I’d like to do more detailing. For now, I’ll just do decals.
BTW, here’s the ol’ gal as she sits in Carson City. Lots of detailing opportunity for my model down the road, but I’m really pleased with how similar the BM model already looks.
Thanks for looking, and happy post-turkey-days,
===>Cliffy