Take apart

Take the housing off. Remove the screw (arrow) that holds the PCB board.

Desolder the wires. You don’t need the screw nor PCB board anymore.

For your interest, this is how the motor looks like. It’s a standard 0716 coreless motor with two shafts, with a tiny flywheel attached to it. The flywheel has hardly any effect, but it might just help to pass over that strain of scenic grass.

A cheeky view at the gearing. A proper setup for nice and smooth running. This has been made by people who know what they are doing.

1st gear:

A To worm: 16 teeth angled, W 1 mm

B 11 teeth, W 1 mm

Last gear on wheel axle: 12T, W 1.5 mm

At the complete front end of the housing, I’ll fit the PCB of the Zimo stayalive. The space is like it’s made for it. But to allow the chassis to fit in that space at the same time, a part of the black plastic motor cover needs to be cut shorter (the part that has the two motor wires going through it). Now if you want to make refitting the housing easy, you would best remove the flywheel and cut off the black plastic part that was covering the flywheel. Taking off the flywheel can be done with a diamond cutter disc or replace the motor with a Tramfabriek 0716S coreless motor.

Below you see the Zimo MS491 sound decoder in place. This is to show how it is positioned. The connections to the motor etc are at the right. This way the motor and wheel contact wires can stay relatively long and makes it easier to handle the decoder when soldering. The wires sticking out at the left are to connect to the stayalive PCB. The blue wire might in future versions of the decoder be blue/white.

Check the diagram to see how the wires are connected. On the stayalive I have two enamel wires soldered which are not connected yet to the supercapacitors, as they still have to go through the wall to the footplate. To keep the bundle of wires together, I have guided them along the edge of the decoder when I wrapped the decoder in Kapton tape (see photo below). To make sure the Kapton tape sticks, don’t touch it with your fingers. I’ve made a video which is on my YouTube channel where I give a handy tip how to handle this kind of tape. Read a bit further on this page for more info on the optional firebox light.

Supercapacitors,

supplied with STACO4

Tramfabriek 9x16 mm Speaker

LED 0603 Orange

Zimo MS491

Zimo STACO4

Track Left

Track Right

Motor Red

Motor Blue

Zimo

STACO4

Note the enamel wires along the edge of the decoder, coming from the stayalive.

1mm thick double sided 3M or Gorilla tape.

This is how it looks when it’s all wrapped. It’s very important that you protect everything from accidental shorts. In my endeavours, most destruction of decoders happened because I didn’t protect the parts well or well enough.

Test your works now. Temporarily connect a speaker and stayalive.

Firebox light fitting

To make the loco even more fun, fit an orange LED for firebox lighting imitation.  I’ve used a 1.2K resistor (not displayed) and a 0603 orange LED. I’m not displaying the steps here, as if you are fitting this LED, you kind of need to have the experience to do so, so you know what to do. That and I didn’t make pictures.

The resistor is in the space near the PCB of the stayalive. In fact, I taped it to the PCB, so it doesn’t float around.

0603 Orange LED

The stayalive PCB fits perfectly in the front pocket of the housing.

Slide the supercaps inside and using a pair of fine tweezers, press the cables between the firebox and supercaps. Touch up the black paint with a fine brush, if needed.

Then you’re done!