Saturday, April 9, 2016

Fitting sound to the Garratt


I haven't been happy with the Tsunami sound decoder I had fitted to the Garratt. It just never sounded right and the whistle was totally wrong. I also had trouble with the running qualities. It seemed to short or reset almost constantly. I never did quite work out if the decoder didn't like running two motors or if I had a poor connection somewhere.

I was't sure what I was going to do about it until I stumbled across a DCC shop in the UK called YouChoos that sells Zimo sound decoders. John has a range of decoders loaded with the sounds of various  British locomotives. What caught my eye was a decoder for the OO scale LMS Garratt that Helijan released a few years back.

While the sounds are not exactly right for G42 they are pretty close as they were recorded off Bulawayo Garratts in South Africa. The decoder arrived in yesterdays mail and I installed it this morning.

I am very happy with how it sounds and to my ear it sounds far more like G42 than the Tsunami did. I can happily recommend the service from John at YouChoos.

Any way take a look and see what you think...