Open house mania is not finished as I’m expecting another visitor in just over a week. So, I’m wasting as little time as possible in getting 1120 running again. The new connectors arrived from Mouser almost overnight, and I drove out to the Far East to pick up a LokSound 5 decoder from Intercity Trains and Hobbies on the weekend.
Then with all the bits in hand, I pulled the two pc boards out of 1120’s tender and mapped the pins on the back of the locomotive so I could replicate them with the new connectors.
Ultimately, I’m going to get myself the proper crimping tool for forming small pins, however, the ones I could find were all on a two-week delivery schedule. So, I set to with some wholly inadequate tools – needle nose pliers, a scrap of brass with a notch filed in it, a hammer – and some urgency. The resulting crimped pins are not pretty, but nobody will ever know as long as they stay together, which I think they will, thanks to the hammer.
Then it was an evening of soldering, and barely remembering to insert lengths of heat-shrink tubing, to load the decoder onto the tender. Will it work? There is only one way to find out!
Pembroke:87 