Today I shipped out the first LGB Genesis diesel I have seen after kitting it out with RCS battery power and Dallee sound. The Genesis would have to be as good an example of LGB craftsmanship ever to grace the shelves. It is superb. Made in China to boot. Well designed internally and superbly engineered. Everything fits perfectly and it is easy to get apart and put back together again. The only real problem I had was fitting a speaker. I cannot obtain one locally that would be a drop in fit. I did have one with almost the exact diameter but it had square mounting holes that did not line up with the LGB positions. I used my trusty 5 watt Altronics 8 ohm speaker as the starting point. Gordon Watson kindly removed the corners with heavy duty metal shears and then turned the rim down to fit the space.
The original is on the right. Then I simply glued it in place in the LGB provided mounting ring.
After that the rest was pretty straightforward. I moved the original LGB pcb and wiring loom from the weights and re-routed the wiring up above the plastic braces to the new position of the LGB lighting power pcb. See last pic. That freed up a lot of space on the weights and over the speaker. I glued sheet styrene in place and then glued the various components in place on the styrene.
A wider sheet of styrene to support the 2 x 7.2 volt 2500 mah Sub C NiCd batteries was glued to the front weight after I removed the front internal brace to make room for the battery packs.
As I was feeding the LGB motors direct from the ESC 14.4 volts is plenty fast enough without the voltage lowering stock LGB pcb. The only cutting of the body was to the internal end piece so that I could mount the charge jack at the rear. I temporarily removed the internal end plate and reamed out the square hole for the external plug so that the charge jack would fit through far enough to get a nut on the outside of the body.
I did file some grooves on the underside of the braces that straddle the weights, to enable cables to be passed between the brace and the weights.
This last pic is largely self explanatory. I mounted the master ON - OFF switch and programming pushbutton on one of the internal braces under the removable hatch. This hatch makes access to the switch, pushbutton and Dallee volume control a snip. The old LGB cables I moved can be seen running through this space but do not get in the way.
The original LGB lighting pcb is mounted upside down under the roof on a piece of styrene glued to the roof. There is simply no need to rewire the loco. I feed fused full traction battery voltage to this pcb. Polarity reversing is handled by a small pcb I make that has two SPDT relays controlled by the RCS lighting outputs. The constant brightness lights are off when the system is in neutral, but will come on instantly when either direction is selected. Nice and simple and very reliable. The Dallee sound quality is aided by the good quality speaker I fitted. Apart from regular engine rev up when moving, the operator will have Horn, Bell, Forced Notch 8 and motor rumble OFF-ON. Once again, fantastic range thanks to the 2.4 GHz Radio. Extra motor “noise” suppression is NOT needed. Next up will be either the Accucraft Black 5 electric powered steam outline loco I have started on, or an updated installation in the Bachmann Mallet. Cheers.
