I'm Glad I Was Sitting Down!

I used a Bachmann GE 44 tonner mechanism to power the Thorny Point box cab.  This mechanism makes a coffee grinder seem like a finely crafted Swiss watch.  To control this fine mechanism I installed a Tsunami sound decoder.  The only problem is the decoder can only be heard when the engine is not moving.

I finally got feed up with this situation and decided to purchase another Bachmann GE 44 tonner.  The plan was to tear the mechanism down and determine what was causing all of the racket.  Then fix it!

The second Bachmann GE 44 tonner showed up and today I took it up stairs to start the discovery process.  I placed it on my test track and gave it a go.  I'm glad I was sitting down because the mechanism was actually quite!  Not completely quite, but quite enough to not warrant any work.

Now all I had to do was remove the two screws holding the body to the mechanism, remove the four wires going to the decoder, removed the body, install the box cab body and reattach the decoder wires.  Of course Murphy was in the room.  The first screw came out fine but the second stripped the head.  So out came the Dremel and grinding bit to grind off the top of the screw.  You got to LOVE Bachmann quality!

After about 1/2 hour I had the body off.  The removal of the decoder and re-installation into the new mechanism went without incident.  A test run revealed you could actually hear the sound decoder over the mechanism.  Good enough!