Today another job has been undertaken. Following trials with battery power, a Schoema diesel has been acquired cheaply to act mainly as a dedicated battery loco, but also as a convenient test bed for any work on DCC chips.
The Schoema is one of my favourite LGB products: simple, rugged and untypically straightforward to assemble and disassemble. It's perfect for a "bad day" loco which you don't mind getting scratched or assaulted by the weather. I've had Schoemas before, but they had two downsides: too short a wheelbase for adequate pickup and a lack of "guts" due to their light weight, with insufficient room to add enough lead, due to the various electrical bits and pieces inside. Going to batteries with a trail car definitely sorts the first problem. As to haulage power, some testing will tell!
First things is to undo all the major components and rip out the wiring loom. Here it is. A curious one-piece soldered assembly with a form of direct decoder interface I've never seen previously. Note the absence of the F1 function pin row. Did someone design a new board just for this starter set loco? I should mention that all the pickups and skates were removed too, making the loco much, much freer running.
All factory wiring removed, two wires are now all that's required to connect the motor to the trail car. This version of Schoema wasn't fitted with a "multi-purpose socket", but the hole is still there (covered by a cover which appears again to be a special design!) so a joiner from a 68333 lighting set gets glued into place instead.
That's the wiring done, though I intend to add an LED for the front headlight using the connector block as the "junction box". The final job was to pack lead shot carefully into the chassis, making sure that as much weight as possible is over the axles. That meant stuffing the front bonnet and the cab below window level with shot to add to the factory-fitted weights.
The loco now weighs in at 2.35 kilos. Tuesday will be testing day.
<message edited by whatlep on 07/03/11 10:27 PM>