TT Piko Taurus - fixing too short couplings

Original Piko Taurus locomotive has very short couplings. This makes troubles for number of cars, not only on low curve diameters. In this photo series, you will see, how this is fixed, using 1mm plastic card and 0.5mm brass wire. The cut coupling parts and a top 1mm plastic part is put on an adhesive tape, glued together using Loctite 401, then the second bottom part of 1mm plastic is glued onto it. You must leave enough space around the hole, to allow free movement when mounted to locomotive. Then drill 0.5mm holes at each end - so the old coupling parts are connected to a bottom (longer) new part in the middle. Cut ~2-3mm of 0.5mm brass wire and glue it into the holes. Finally sand the top surface, to allow smooth movement. I do it using a small rotary diamond disc.

Installing ESU LokSound Micro into Tillig BR189

Beautiful Tillig locomotive, such as BR189 OBB, it would be pity having no sound. When opened, I realised quickly there is simply not space between inner roof (PCB) and the inner mechanics of chassis to fit the standard loadspeaker. Instead, I had to buy a set of 2 smaller ones in round shape, which would fit exactly under the PCB at each end.
First thing is to document original state of wires soldered to the PCB, as we need to get them disconnected and take out the PCB.
In order to accomodate the decoder itself, there is not enough space as well. There need to be milled an extra space, as shown in the pictures. Before milling, the locomotive needs to be covered in a plastic bag and adhesive tape around the milled space, so the dust will not get inside the locomotive. It is also a good idea to remove the motor.
Then the PCB needs to be prepared for loadspeakers - just 2 additional holes are needed to fit the top of the loadspeaker in it. After the wires are connected to loadspeakers in serial configuration, they are glued by a cyanoacrylate glue to the PCB, wires are shaped in the manner they will fit between the space left in motor and flywheels.
At the end the decoder connector need to be placed instead of the original small PCB for analogue operation, with orange wire (1) oriented down. The connector pins need to be L shaped before connecting it, so it fits behind the driver's cab. Then a short test ride and the locomotive body can be put on.

TT american cargo rail chassis - photoetched

After a longer break, I have finally in my hand the first testing batch of photo-etched parts for north american rail cargo chassis. I will use for the intermodal container carriages.

The first container carriages will be probably Gunderson MAXI Stack I or IV, eventually III.

The scale is TT (1:120). The price of the 2x single chassis, including 4 high quality metal gear assembly, could be estimated at around CZK 278 or $17 or €11.























The wheels are turned metal, one side isolated, with a diameter of 7.7mm (equiv. to real 920mm).

Installing ESU LokSound Micro v3.5 into ICE 3 (Piko)

Next challenge with installation of ESU LokSound Micro decoder was the Piko ICE 3. Here I found no space to fit the standard loadspeaker, eventually it would be possible to fit the 2 pieces of the smallest loudspeakers - each at the end of bistro car, which serves as engine in the model. However waiting for the smaller loudspekers would be too long and I was quite unpatient. So I took a steel micro saw, steel scissors and decided to make a place enough to fit the standard loadspeaker 16x25mm. First of all, the 8-Pin connector NEM652 is located on one side - this allows only to fit the decoder itself. The other side has more space, but it's moslty occupied by half useless PCB with supressor parts. First I cut in half this PCB, leaving on it only the capacitors, the two parts I cut out and coldered directly to wires, not embarassing the space needed for loudspeaker any more.

Then I took sealing tape and tried to protect the inner space against dust from sanding and sawing. I started to make a round hole with a diameter of the lower part of loudspeaker into the metal top body part. It went very well, after about 10 mins. the hole was finished. I secured with a sealing tape the lower part of loudspeaker - to isolate it from the metal body and put in the place. I had to make the wires to the loudspeaker longer as well. Then I cut again the connector from LokSound decoder - again no space for it and soldered the wires directly onto the connector on ICE. You can see the reference of the NEM652 and NEM651 stadnards on http://www.opendcc.de/info/decoder/schnittstellen_e.html. Finally I sanded the plastic cover on the top sides of the loudspeaker to fit more easily under the cover. The work was complete and test made successful. However I found almost all the sounds too weak - I will have to increase the volume for most of them. However the ICE3 with all cars together is simply too noisy as well.

You can see the ICE 3 with LokSound decoder in action on my YouTube channel.

TT layout - part 002 (custom crossings)

During planning of the layout I realized, that I want to have almost in scale (just not having long enough space) a real railway station. Suprisingly the Zurich Stadelhofen city centre station fits into my layout just from the side under the planned main station. So I decided to compose the Stadelhofen into my layout. During planning and measurements I found, that the standard TT Tillig rail components and turnouts do not fit the scale size of Stadelhofen - the rails are much closer together than what offer the standard turnouts.

So the only option I had, was to build the custom crossings myself. I needed to have one crossing between two rail lines on right side and a single crossing, but in turn on the left side. For the crossing I used 2 straight switches EW2 and 2 curwe switches IBW, left & right. Standard distance between 2 rail lines is 43mm, but in Stadelhofen this is as low as 32mm. Using standard components, I could use either DGV combined switch, having the standard 43mm distance or 4 switches with a crossing between them, but this would lead into an even bigger distance. Both cases would lead also to shorten track length in the station.

With help of thin diamond sawing micro wheel I cut the 4 switches and saved the cutted parts for later use. with a steel knife I cutted the plastic sleepers in the way that all 4 switches will fit together, while keeping the correct rail line positions between the opposite switches. They will be later connected using the parts saved after cutting. When all 4 pieces fit together I glued them via plastic sleepers. Then I cut and sanded the rails to fit into the place - see the photos for reference. The edges needed to be sanded and some of them also isolated by glueing between them plastic strips. After glueing together all was sanded to allow smooth wheel movements across it. The last thing to do was to insert guiding ribs, made of ABS plastic strips 2x0.75mm. I used only Loctite 401 fast glue, everything is OK, after several weeks of traffic.

Installing ESU LokSound Micro v3.5 into TT Piko Taurus

Installation of ESU LokSound micro v3.5 into Piko Taurus isn't difficult. Taurus has quite a big space for standard loudspeaker which comes together with LokSound micro decoder. However the decoder itself does not fit with it's connector. I had to cut the 6-pin connector, which anyway doesn't fit the Piko's 8-pin and solder the wires individually into Taurus connector directly. How the wires are connected is described on http://www.opendcc.de/info/decoder/schnittstellen_e.html, or extracted tables below, showing only NEM651 (6-pin) and NEM652 (8-pin) connectors.


Locomotive Interface Pinout

NEM651 (6 pins)

Signal	Color	Pin
motor right	orange	1
motor left	grey	2
track right	red	3
track left	black	4
light front	white	5
light rear	yellow	6



Note: The light can either be connected against the right track or common (+).
Common is unfortunately not on the interface, you can either use the rectifier on the decoder (with an extra cable)
or create it externally with two diodes from the track signals.




Plug: round or rectangular pins, 1.27 mm grid

NEM652 (8 pins)

Signal	Color	Pin		Color	Signal
motor right (+)	orange	1	8	red	track right (+)
light rear (-)	yellow	2	7	blue	Common, (+)
F1 (may be open)	green	3	6	white	light front (-)
track left (-)	black	4	5	grey	motor left

Plug: round pins, 2.54 mm grid




You can see the Taurus with LokSound decoder in action on my YouTube channel.

Installing ESU LokSound Micro v3.5 into Tillig TT Desiro

I decided to have a digital decoder with sound installed into my Desiro. I decided to use the ESU LokSound Micro v3.5. I purchased it in a local store, where the stuff also loaded the Desiro sounds into the device memory - this can be only done with a special HW LokSound programmer, while the large number of sounds for lot of different engines can be downloaded from www.esu.eu website for free.

Installation 1:
The Tillig TT Desiro has 2 cars, in each of them is a PCB. In the first car, where the electric motor is, there is also a 6 pin connector for the DCC decoder. First I wanted to make use of that connector, but suddenly there is insufficient space in the car, with the connector for the decoder and speaker. Also the cables are not long enough to simply put everything into the second car and use the connector in the first car. So, I cut the connector from the decoder and soldered longer cables. The decoder worked connected this way, but additional cables which made it's way through the middle section, made themselves also a too big obstacle for a movement in curves and turnouts.

Installation 2:
So, I was puzzled myself, whether on the second PCB in the second car (without a connector) aren't the same junctions as on the first PCB, and surprisingly they are. I cut the cables from the connector again and soldered them exactly into positions on the second PCB, which I checked with a multimeter before cutting the cables. Now there are no additional cables going through middle moveable section and all decoder cables, decoder itself and speaker fit well into the second car under the inner floor. Well, the speaker was little bigger then it would fit, so a little sanding with a diamond wheel was necessary on edges and on the lower side - the plastic frame doesn't necessarily need to be such big around the speaker.
Some photos are attached from the installation 1 and 2, as well as a HD video (click Watch in HD below the video frame) can be watched on youtube with the Desiro run with sound.

Low res video (below):

TT layout - part 001

After some years of just thinking about it, being busy building just the scale model ships (jsyrovat.ic.cz/models), I finally decided to construct the TT model railway at my home.
TT is a 1:120 scale, very popular in former Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia. Even now, there are number of new manufacturers, with lot of different products for this size.
Since I have lot of items for many years in a box, the decision about scale was easy, it also allows me to place lot more things on the layout size than in H0.
I started constructing the three separated sections, as shown on the pictures.

Middle section with base for hidden staging station.
Below is right side section and middle section.