This LGB Locomotive is based upon, the Narrow Guage, Alaskan railroad called the White Pass & Yukon Railroad.
the railroad was formed in the late 1800’s as part of the Klondike gold rush, its a narrow gauge railroad that enjoys some of the most amazing scenery, today the railroad is a tourist train, with ride often being the destination.
this particular locomotive was made by Alco. Alco locomotives, generally are said to be noisy with a lot of vibrations, my father says that most of the crews didn’t like working on the locomotives.
to start this model was introduced in the late 80’s and was not DCC ready, to install a decoder I needed to isolate the power pickups from the motors, this required modifying the power trucks.
during this time I also installed the speaker and found a sound project for the locomotive.
here’s the installed decoder, on a custom mount, allowing the wires to go under the decoder, the connectors added allowing easier servicing in the future
After some testing, and sound tuning, here’s the locomotive running on DCC, one of the things I spent extra time on was the turbo sound, allowing you to hear the turbo spin up as load or speed is applied. Also, the locomotive is pulling a White Pass & Yukon coach, which is ironically close to if not the same scale.
Prestige Garden Railroads 