First if you are going to install a decoder with an NMRA plug on it, be sure to read the Problem Page on this loco.

The first decoder I installed in this loco was a Digitrax DH140. But this is a very smooth and quite running steamer, that was just begging for sound. So I decided to go with a Soundtraxx DSD 150 decoder. As it turns out Digitrax and Soundtraxx use the same 9 pin connector on their decoders. This made it very easy to go from one decoder to the other, so you might want to keep this in mind.

First thing to always do, is follow the manufacturers directions and test the decoder out. With Digitrax and Soundtraxx, if you cut the wires on the decoder plugs, it is to late. Besides you do not want to go through the installation, find out something is wrong, and not know if it was something you did, or the decoder was bad to start with. I have never found a bad one yet, but there is always a first time for everything. And it is always better to be safe/sure then sorry.

Once you get the 2-8-0 out of it's package, you will notice that the wiring from the loco to the tender is already there for you, plugs, and sockets already installed. The motor and headlight are already isolated. Yes the Great Looking and Smooth running Steamer is really DCC ready. And everything we are going to do is in the tender. So this is where we start.

Turn the tender over and look just behind the front truck. Here you will find a single phillips screw in the middle. Remove the screw and lift up on the front of the tender shell. You will find there are two plastic tabs that hold the back of the tender shell down. Raise the front to about a 30-45 degree angle, and gently lift up on the back till the plastic tabs release from the tender frame. Once you have the shell off, you will see a PCB (printed circuit board) with a NMRA socket on it. And wiring from the PCB to the sockets in the front of the tender and also from the tender trucks. Yes the loco not only is all wheel pick up, it is actually 10 wheel pickup. There is also a nice heavy metal weight in there.

The first thing we are going to have to do, is remove the PCB, besides not being wired properly, there is not enough room for it and a Soundtraxx DSD 150 decoder. Before we do, you need to look the wires that are connected to the PCB over and get familiar with where they go and what they do. You will see there are 4 wires connected to the front of the PCB. 2 Yellow wires, these are for the Headlight. Next to them are 2 more one Black and one Red. The Red is the motor +, the Black is the motor - brushes. At the back of the PCB you will see 2 more connectors with 2 wires connected to each. The outside connector has one Red and one Black wire connected to it. The inside connector has two Red wires connected. The connector with 2 Red wires is the right rail pickup, both from the loco and the tender. The connector with the Red and Black wires is the left rail pickup from the loco and the tender. Once you have become familiar with the wiring, and with out cutting any yet, remove the PCB. Look down the middle of the PCB you will find 2 small phillips screws, one front and one rear of the PCB, remove these and lift the PCB up and out of the way. You will now have a good idea of how the wires run from the loco pickup and the tender pickup to the 2 rear connectors on the PCB. You might also want to cut off the posts that held up the PCB, I cut mine flush with the top of the metal weight.

The Soundtraxx DSD 150 decoder fits nicely in the rear of the tender, there is now plenty of room both in length and height. If you remove the 9 pin plug from the decoder, it will be easier to do the wiring. We want to place the decoder 9 pin plug just behind the hole through the bottom of the tender, this is where we took the screw out that holds the shell on to the frame.  If you take a look at the shell, you will see there is a post that comes down into this hole. If we place the plug just to the rear of the hole and leave just enough space so we can spread the wires around this hole. This will locate the decoder in a good spot, and allows the use of the metal weight to act as a heat sink for the decoder. So we want to install the decoder with the flat side down. This means that looking from the rear of the tender, the brown wire from the plug will be on the right side. So now we know where we want the decoder to go, we know where the wires are connected to, and we know how we want the decoder positioned, it's time to warm up the soldering iron, get out the solder, wire cutters, and heat shrink tubing.

Ok lets start with the decoder Red wire, with the decoder plug just behind the hole, remember the two Red wires connected to the inside rear connector on the PCB, we want to connect both those to the Red decoder wire. Cut the wires off the PCB and adjust the length of the decoder wire.  Leave a little slack in the wires so we can adjust the position of the decoder a little later one. Tin the wires, slip a piece of heat shrink on, and solder all three together. Next we will connect the decoder Black wire to the Red and Black wires that are on the outside rear connector. As above cut to length, tin and slip on the heat shrink, solder all three together.
Now doing the same, except now will will only be dealing with two wires, on from the PCB and one from the decoder plug, connect the decoder Orange wire to the front PCB Red wire. Connect the decoder Gray wire to the front PCB Black wire. Now you can cut both remaining Yellow wires, and get the PCB out of the way, and toss it on the bench or way, your choice. Take connect the decoder Blue wire to either on of the Yellow wires. And connect the decoder White wire to 100 ohm resistor the other end to the Yellow wire. NOTE: you might want to play with the resistor to get the lamp to look the way you want, I would not go below a 40 ohm resistor though. Also make sure all the connections are covered with heat shrink.

Now this is optional, the loco does not come with a backup light. I wanted one, so I got one out of the junk drawer. I think it was from an old Tyco or something. I drilled it out for a small 1.5 volt 025mA bulb. Made a lens from a drop of epoxy, and wired it in. To do this solder one wire to the Blue decoder wire, and the other to a 560 ohm resistor and the other end to the decoder Yellow wire. NOTE: again the resistor may vary pending on what you want the light to look like and also the bulb you use. If you use a 12v lamp look at about a 40 ohm resistor and if you look at using a LED look at about 680 ohm resistor.

Next thing we need to add is a speaker, this is a SOUNDtraxx decoder remember. Well now for another nice surprise, Bachmann even thought of that. Pick up the tender shell and look inside. Just to the rear of the coal load, you will see a small plastic tab sticking inside the shell. Push forward and up, the coal load will pop up. Lift it up from the rear and swing the front out from under the shell. Guess what a nice little speaker box and just about the right size for a standard 1" speaker, such as Soundtraxx sells. Any 1" speaker at 8 ohms and 1 watt will work as long as it will fit. The only thing we need to do is drill a few small holes in the load to make a speaker grill out of it. Position the speaker with the wire connectors towards the front of the load, that is towards the loco. Position the speaker on the underside of the load so the wire connectors will be above the rectangular hole going though the shell under the load. Put the load back in with the speaker as far forward as you can and still be able to snap the load back on. Once you have found this location, remove the load and place the speaker back in that position. Take a scribe or Exacto and mark all the way around the speaker. Remove the speaker and you can now see the circle you made on the underside of the load. Stay with in 1/16" inside the circle and drill about a dozen small holes up through the load. Now carefully glue the speaker to the underside of the load, using the scribed circle to position it. Be careful, that you do not get any glue on the inside cone of the speaker, it will not sound right again if you do. I like to use silicon to glue it down with. It will stay flexible and is easy to make a seal around the speaker with. Yes you need to be careful you do not get any on the inside of the speaker, but you also need to seal the speaker front to the underside of the load. And yes it is not a flat surface. The easiest way to do this is put a little silicon on the top edge of the speaker with a toothpick, put the speaker in place, and let it set for an hour or so. Now it should be held in place good enough that you can take a little more silicon and a toothpick and put a coat around the outside edge of the speaker and form a good air tight seal. Now solder the - wire from the decoder 3 pin plug to the - connector on the speaker, position the 100 uF cap in the back corner of the speaker box and solder the decoder purple + wire from the 3 pin plug to the + side of the cap. Wire the - side of the cap to the speaker + connector, make sure every thing is covered with heat shrink and take a dab of silicon and glue down the cap by it's top in the corner. Feed the 3 pin plug down through the rectangular hole in the shell and push the front of the load down and under the shell till the tab lines up in the back and push the load down till it snaps in place.

Connect both the 9 pin connector and the 3 pin connector on the decoder, lay the decoder flat side down, make sure you have enough room to spread the wires from the 9 pin plug around the hole, so the post from the shell can fit down in the hole, and place a little silicon on both sides of the decoder to hold it in place. Or tape it down, your choice here. Look over all your wiring, make sure all connections are covered with heat shrink, and everything should look nice and neat. Cut any of the un-used wires from the decoder off, but leave them long enough that you can still connect to them later, if you should decide to add something latter. Place the shell back on the frame by starting the tabs in the back and pushing them down and in, swing the front down and replace the phillips screw under the frame.

Place the loco on a protected track, such as a service mode programming track, and read a few CVs. If you can read them, then you are all set. If not go back and check your wiring out and find the problem. If you can read the CVs or it checked out on a current limited track, you are all set to have some fun. Place the loco on the layout, if everything is as should be, you will hear it come to life right away. The default address is 03, so set a throttle to 03 and have a ball. Check it out, play with the sounds. You can always go back latter and program it up to your tastes.

NOTE: I used the Auto-Exhaust it seems to work very well. But Soundtraxx does sell encoder wheels that will sync the exhaust to the drivers. This means you will have to install the encoder wheel and wiper, as well as wire up the Brown wire from the 3 pin plug on the decoder. Having used wipers for exhaust cams before, this usually means a little more maintenance and adjustments periodically. I thought I would try the Auto-Exhaust out and see how it worked. So far I am very happy with it. The advantage of the encoder is it can pickup wheel slip and the Auto-Exhaust can not. But to be very honest, the 2-8-0 does not slip it's wheels very easy, you would really have to have a lot of cars behind it to get them slipping. I would suggest you try the Auto-Exhaust first, and if you are not happy, you can always go back and install the encoder on one of the drive wheels.

CV Settings: Here are the CV settings I used to get the decoder to match the loco and my Digitrax Chief. All figures are HEX.
CV02 Vstart 09, CV03 Acc 19, CV4 Dec 19. These seem to set the start voltage, and the Accel and DeAccel rates for a nice sound from the DDE (Dynamic Digital Exhaust) This will very the volume of the exhaust based on engine load.
Set CV52 to 4A, this will set the Foreground sounds to AECS 2 cylinder, DDE enable, CAM to Auto-Exhaust, APS to Dual Air pump, and the Bell rate to default.
Set CV54 to 28, this seems to be about the right rate for the Auto-Exhaust sync.
Set CV35 to 10, this will remap the Bell to function 1 to match the throttle icon. Set CV37 to 20, this will remap function 3 to coupler clank. These all remap the Sounds used the most to the 5 up front function buttons F0 lights, F1 Bell, F2 Whistle, F3 Coupler Clank, and F4 Blow Down. If you only have throttles that support only 4 or 5 functions, you can remap the Dynamo F6 to F0(f) and F0(r) Lights, by turning on bit 7 of both CV33 and CV34, this way you can have all the sounds the Soundtraxx Steam decoder has to offer in just 5 functions F0 - F4.

NOTE: Selecting the SoundTraxx decoder!. Almost every sound on the decoders is programmable, except for the Whistle/Horn, these are locked in ROM, thus can not be changed. For my 2-8-0 I used the Westside Lumber Shay. I liked the Whistle and it is very playable. Unless you really want to match the sound decoder to the prototype, you can select any one you want.

Again, unless you need to go with a prototype sound, go to their web page and listen to all the decoders. Remember the Whistle on the Steam and the Horn on the Diesel can not be changed. The tone, speed, and cutoff rate of the Exhaust can be changed. So can the bell rate, and so on. The CVs listed above do just this.

If I were to do it again, and I just might. I was trying to decide between the Shay and East Broad Top 2-8-2, I liked it's Whistle also. So I just might go with the EBT this time. Though I am really very happy with the Westside Lumber Shay.

As stated above go to their web pages SoundTraxx Sound Samples,  and listen to the different decoders Whistles and make you choice from there. Keep in mind that just about everything else is programmable except the Whistle and/or Horn, they are in Rom and can not be changed.

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