A sound decision

Not much progress actually because we are now in the process of moving house (again!). Not too far this time, but the house we have bought needs quite a bit of work, so this is likely to reduce modelling time.

Having said that though a few items of interest have come up randomly in the new house - a grass mat, some old ballast, track pins, white metal castings (box of) and a few coils of layout wire have so far been found left by the previous owner. That and 6 rail books too. Can't be bad. Also the new garage features decent dimensions that mean the whole layout can be up at once!

The proceeds from the sale of Nant Gwernol (now gone) have been ploughed into that pictured above - an esu loksound micro v3.5 DCC sound decoder. Check out this link.

This will plug into the 6 pin socket in my warship chassis that sits under 'Castell Caernarfon' and will play the sounds from a SNCB / NMBS Reeks 59, Cockerill - whatever one of those is??? Visit here and scroll down to code 53411 and press the tiny play button to hear what I mean.

The reason I have chosen this odd prototype is that it sounds closest to the Funkey, especially the horn and it also contains some extra functions:

1	Sound on/off
F2	airhorn 1
F3	airhorn 2
F4	coupler
F5	compressor
F6	Acceleration/brake time, Shuting Mode/Shunting speed
F7	brake release
F8	sand
F9	AUX5
F10	AUX6
F11	conductor's signal (whistle)
F12	airhorn short 1
F13	airhorn short 2

should be fun!

An extra benefit of these esu decoders is that you can also buy a device called the lokprogrammer, which allows you to upload any of the many sounds on the esu website to be decoder or even upload your own. In time I hope to record the actual Funkey horn and use that!

Colin

Colin