Digitization of BB 16671 from Vitrains - part 1

 

The BB 16500 was everywhere around Lille at the time.

Prototypical engine

Here are a couple of pictures of the real engine pulling VO2N, RRR, or RIO:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58977065@N06/33119363361/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jobiwannn/6593256109/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58977065@N06/32437399683/

Model locomotive

Here the model made by Vitrains with reference 2177 with the "casquette" logo:

Opening the engine seemed straight-forward:

But it was actually very challenging; I tried my usual thing to separate the body from the chassis, but nothing moved:

I eventually found a few pointers online:

• https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/67206-vitrains-bb-16500-question/
• https://www.forum-train.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7364

So I need to force a little starting on one end:

Digitization

There's no room near the PCB and according to the manual, the decoder and speaker must go under the chassis:

I'm using the sound project from ESU website:

I loaded the sound project on a blank ESU decoder ref 58420:

Unfortunately, just like that, the decoder is too long!!

I decided to carve the plastic and it seemed to be okay:

I did some very quick testing and it looked okay, but more work is required ...

Rame RRR Nord Pas-de-Calais from Rails Models Creation

 

I finally took the time to set up both RRR rames NPDC into the ECoS. Here's the link to the previous post about the somewhat complicated light functions of the decoder ...

Rame RRR Nord Pas-de-Calais from Rails Models Creation

 

EPM releases the RRR passenger cars a while back. A version from Nord Pas-de-Calais was supposed to be released, but it never came. Rails Models Creation made the model for me.

Prototypical cars

https://www.flickr.com/photos/155008070@N02/48520046971/

Miniature models

A picture of the model - same number as the photo above 😁:

The model comes with a DCC decoder already installed and configured. The main page is here: https://www.epm-productions.com/fonctionnalites/fonctionnalites-rrr/

The functions are quite sophisticated and are as follow:

The notice can be found here: