55 ton Shay + Sierra sound ??

[PGEcrew]

hi all

I have recently aquired a 55 ton Shay.
For the time being it will be track powered, with battery RC in its future.

I have a Sierra board for another Shay that I wish to use.

I believe that the two long blue wires coming from the boiler are the chuff wires. (please correct me if wrong).
My problem is figuring out where to connect the output from the sound board.

Maybe someone can provide some help, preferably with pictures.

Cheers.

[Curmudgeon]

Um...what do you mean by the output from the sound board?

If you mean track power, the orange and gray wires in the left rear screw terminals are the output to the motors.
Red and black are track.
Loosen the screws and put wires from there to pins 7&8 on the Sierra.

Generally, so far, chuff on the 55-ton are blue, but if you've worked with Bachmann LS enough, you will know the colors change without warning.
They will be the two loose wires not connected to anything inside the fuel bunker.

TOC

[PGEcrew]

Sorry for the lack of clarity.

Where do the sound output from terminals 9-10 on the Sierra board connect on the Shay board.

Cheers.

[Curmudgeon]

Without opening one up, if I recall, the 8 wires along the left (fireman's) side, at the rear....the front 4 are motors and pickups to the rear truck, the rear 4 are backup light and speaker.
I don't have the instructions handy, but possibly there is a tie-point for the speaker elsewhere.
Otherwise, figure out which are backup light (voltmeter on the pads with unit on the track, slowly backing) to see which have power.
Next would be pull both tender shells, find out which pins on the plug are not currently in use (speaker!), orient yourself to those pins under the shell, hold the plug next to it and see what color wires are speaker, find those on the main board, cut and splice.

But, I thought there was a tie-point.
I'll have to dig one out and check.

TOC

[PGEcrew]

Thanks for taking the time Dave.

Incidentally, There were NO instructions included with this locomotive as received. Only the history and lubrication DVD, bags of bits & pieces with the usual engineer/fireman figures and smoke oil.

This is the Meadow River model. The  stack was knocked-off in transit.

Cheers.

[Curmudgeon]

Okay, you still need me to check?
I can!
TOC

[PGEcrew]

Yes please.

[PGEcrew]

After a bit of digging, I found the wires that I was looking for. there are no terminals for these.
They are the red/white wires that are connected to the PC board. they are the last two wires to the rear on the engineer's side.
I did not attempt to un-solder them, rather I cut them, leaving a stub attached to the board. they are easily visible in the second photo.

Before even touching the existing PC board I followed TOC's procedure and hot-glued ALL the connected wires to the board. I then installed the Sierra board using only one screw and some Super-Flex RTV.



Ready to close it up. Note the red/white speaker wire stubs at the left of the photo



I relieved the inside top of the coal bunker to clear the top of the battery.
I removed the coal spill and ran the on/off switch wires through the resulting gap.
This is temporary. RC is next. The battery and switch will be removed and replaced by a voltage regulator running off the main battery, which will be located in the tender along with the power switch.

Perhaps this might help someone else with the same question.

Cheers.