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Thomas the Tank Engine w/Protosound 3 (Bachmann G scale)


Rayman4449
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Wow, impressive Ray! I've installed a Titan-U (HO Scale decoder) in my kids' Thomas, with a tiny HO speaker (both in the coal bunker), so I know what it looks like inside. Did you make some modifications to fit something bigger? The smoke is also impressive, but it looks like you took out the moving eyes mechanism to fit that. I'd also be interested in closeups/details of how you did the LEDs (the physical part of modifying the housings).

 

Also, how is PS3 with dirty track? That's the real problem with our Thomas. All my locomotives run fine on moderately clean stainless steel, but Thomas needs extremely clean track! As it is, my kids run their battery powered locomotives instead, and Thomas almost never runs. I'm planning to switch it to battery too this year.

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Thanks Ben :)  The engine didn't originally have a speaker, smoke or any lights so I had to make space for the speaker, lights etc.  The PS3 won't really be any different than other digital control boards in that if you have spotty power going to it, it's not going to run very well.  In my case the engine was running good without power pickup problems but it only has four wheels total picking up power so I can see the engine could be marginal in some cases.  On this Thomas I installed incandescent lights and was just a matter of drilling the right size holes for them.  Yes the eye mechanics had to be disabled to make room for the smoke unit.  

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36 minutes ago, Rayman4449 said:

Thanks Ben :)  The engine didn't originally have a speaker, smoke or any lights so I had to make space for the speaker, lights etc.  The PS3 won't really be any different than other digital control boards in that if you have spotty power going to it, it's not going to run very well.  In my case the engine was running good without power pickup problems but it only has four wheels total picking up power so I can see the engine could be marginal in some cases.  On this Thomas I installed incandescent lights and was just a matter of drilling the right size holes for them.  Yes the eye mechanics had to be disabled to make room for the smoke unit.  

 

Cool, thanks for the additional details. Regarding spotty power, yeah, with just four wheels picking up power AND a very rigid suspension (or lack thereof) it doesn't have to even be very dirty track, as a slight twist will cause two wheels to lose power. But the biggest problem is that with DCC (at least my decoder/config) is when it regains power it doesn't immediately resume full speed. It has to do the startup (two toots) and then accelerate up to full speed. Is it the same way with PS3? All this said, I was able to add a 4700uF capacitor which made a huge difference. Perhaps I should just add a few more capacitors.

 

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Interesting,  ok yeah I can see that being a real problem.   In the case of PS3 it just resumes original speed without needing to stop.   So in that situation yes PS3 handles it well.  It's just that in cases where any engine is losing power the engine will sputter physically because it loses the power to the motors for those belief durations. 

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