Digitization of Piko engines: BB 460000

 

Following on my quest to digitalize my engines, I want to make a digital consist of two BB 460000, just like the prototype below:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/150753720@N04/48536721122/

For this consist, I have BB 460054 and BB 460050 as Piko 96479 and Piko 96470, both in DC.

Digitization of BB 460054

I decided to have the BB 460054 with the sound decoder from Piko. First, let's do an analog run:

Then, I opened the engine: there are 3 screws to remove; it's easy to follow the instructions. The cabin comes out first, then the back of the structure, and by pivoting the front comes out fairly easily too.

For the decoder, I chose the Piko 56427 SmartDecoder 4.1 Sound PluX22 

It can be purchased here and at several online stores as well. The manual is here. The speaker needs to be soldered onto the engine's circuit board, so I decided to test the decoder first:

For the sound, there are two steps:

1. Solder the wires from the speaker onto the engine's circuit board. It's well explained in the instructions and there is no + or - wires;
2. Remove two screws that hold a metal weight and place the speaker into the plastic holder provided as a spare part.

And let's give it a try:

And here's the final result for this engine:

Digitization of BB 460050

For the BB 460050, I used a blank ESU decoder LokPilot V5.0 DCC Plux 22 - ESU 59622. 

As you can see the running is not as smooth as the other engine which will be an issue when trying to run as a consist.