Model Railroading > Keep alive for Walthers SW7

Has anyone put a keep alive in a Walthers SW7? If so, could you share how you did it.

Thanks,

Jeff

I have a WalthersProto SW1200, which shares a similar if not identical drivetrain to a WalthersProto SW7.  For this SW1200 of mine, I used a small format 3-wire keep-alive made by Train-o-Matic – The Train-o-Matic SPP-N to mate with the factory-supplied ESU Loksound 5 (with Next18 interface) sound decoder.  

Of course, there are many other brands of keep-alives and sound decoders out there, but I wanted to keep using the ESU sound decoder that came with this WalthersProto SW1200 of mine.

For such a tight install, I separated the capacitor from the circuit board of the keep alive from each other.  I mounted the capacitor vertically like a barrel next to the front flywheel, and cleared out some room under the cab floor on the fireman's side to place the keep alive's circuit board, being careful to maintain the proper polarity between the two components.  
In this fashion, the interior of the cab remains undisturbed, and any heat generated by the capacitor is mitigated by the metal speaker mount which is part of the locomotive's frame.  

Alternatively, if you don't care about how the cab interior looks, you can just stuff a keep-alive directly into the cab, making for a more straightforward install once you clear out some or all of the cab interior details.  As for me, I elected to preserve the existing details in the Walthers cab interior, since everything inside the cab is so visible.

I ordered my Train-o-Matic SPP-N keep-alive circuit direct from the link below.  Shipping was fast from the UK to the USA.  Hope this helps.

https://tramfabriek.co.uk/powerpacks.html

Cheers,
Harry



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/25 19:10 by tracktime.

Will try that.
Thanks Harry!