Model Railroading > A Cram Job!

I've owned this Bachmann 2-10-2 for quite a few years. I made it into a quasi SP locomotive by adding a Bachmann Vandy Tender with a oil bunker, number boards and some other minor changes. Four years ago I accidentally pulled some wires out of a plug trying to seperate the tender and locomotive, and it hasn't run since.
Recently I decided to get it running again and do some major upgrades to modify it into a close match to a SP F-1 class locomotive. Some of the major changes are the removal of the rear sand dome. The stairs at front will be replaced with steps and pedestals. I already changed the delta trailing truck to a USRA type. And I will be adding blow down mufflers and smokebox door hinges among other things. It will also be getting a new road number to better match a particular prototype, but I haven't quite settled on which locomotive yet.
A current part of the project involves installing sound into the Bachmann tender which is cramped. I attempted to install this Tsunami 2 steam decoder into a brass SP 4-10-2 I have, but found it was not suitable for brass locomotives. The Tsunami 2 decoder uses the current keeper mostly to keep the lights and sound on, but very little goes to keeping the locomotive moving. That won't work on a typical brass locomotive from an older era where electrical pickup was sketchy at best. So I decided it would be a better fit for this Bachmann model that has better electrical pickup. But "fit" might be the operative word. I've removed the original weights in the tender and the plastic studs that held the original mother board in place. This freed up a lot of the room inside. In the photo below I have the water tank part of the tender turned upside down and have placed the decoder, current keeper and speaker all side by side in the tank section. I just used some canopy glue to hold them in place so they don't fall out of place while reassembling the tender. I've added 1oz in lead weight back into the tender to replace a equal amount of the Bachmann steel weights. Now I hope I can get this all crammed back together.
The I-phone speakers are a good choice when you have little space to work with. They are small and cheap. In this case I have it standing on edge with the open port in such a way it will be facing downward in the tender. This is one of many I-phone 4 speakers I bought years ago for a couple $ each, and have since bought some newer models as well. They cast a large quality sound much like a I-phone does, since they are the speaker being used.
The SP 2-10-2's were popular on secondary mainlines in Oregon, especially the Siskiyou Line and Coos Bay Line, but could be found running the mainline up the Willamette Valley as well.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/26 07:47 by funnelfan.

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Those Bachmann 2-10-2's are not bad models. I have one of their USRA light Mountains. The Atlantic Coast Line had light 2-10-2's with Vanderbilt tenders. Seems likely that Bachmann would have made them, but I'm not sure if they did.

Good news. Tender is back together and hooked up to the locomotive. And everything is working great! Sounds great too!

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Good work. I always appreciate photos of the innards.

Great job. I have heard of some putting the sound in the boiler. They claim it sounds better too.

Victor Baird

Posted from Android

wabash2800 Wrote:
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> Great job. I have heard of some putting the sound
> in the boiler. They claim it sounds better too.

The sound comes from where it should, at the expense of lost weight and tractive effort.

wabash2800 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Great job. I have heard of some putting the sound
> in the boiler. They claim it sounds better too.
>
> Victor Baird
>
> Posted from Android

It would be nice to do a two speaker setup with a sugar cube speaker in the smokebox directly under the stack which opens into the smokebox. And a larger cone speaker in the tender for deeper sounds. Have the two working in tandem would make it less obvious the sound is coming from the tender. Trying to carve out space for a single decent speaker in the boiler means giving up a lot of traction weight, and then there is a issue of too many wires between the locomotive and tender.
I would like to see the decoder manufactures make a steam decoder that is split and would reguire just 4 wires between the locomotive and tender. Two of the wires would be for track pickup to feed the decoder in the tender which does the incoming DCC signal processing and has the sound chip. It would support a speaker in the tender, keep alive circuit and support a rear headlight, and marker lights. The other two wires would be the power+decoder signal wires. The tender part of the decoder would send rectified power and a local carrier signal to the locomotive decoder telling it what to do and what sounds the locomotive speaker should make. The carrier signal has control packets and sound packets that alternate. The locomotive decoder reads that incoming signal control packet and operates the motor and lights accordingly. Then it reads the sound packet and plays those sounds on the speaker in the smokebox. If that gets too complicated, they may have to go with a six-wire setup and seperate the sound and contol aspects. It would still be better than the dozen wires or so I need to use now for all the lights and features.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR