Athearn F45's

[fifer]

I managed to get some crappy pictures of the F45's and some pics of the MRC 1806 (for Kato SD40-2) Sound decoder installed. You must use liberal amounts of Kapton tape under it and add solder to the pickup pads (for better connection) and you need to file down (narrow) the wide center of the decoder (where you see the kapton tape sticking up) also desolder and solder the motor pickups from the Athearn board to the MRC board and when installed the decoder os backwards so you need to set CV29 to 007 for reverse operation. Works well and sound is pretty good.

And here are the locos.

Mike

 

[BillW]

Mike,

That's a great looking pair of locomotives! I've always found the F45's appealing and would love to have one myself. The locomotive though is likely too large for the 10.5" radius curves on my new layout. But you never know what I could end up buying at this year's train show.

 

[fifer]

Bill , The longer I run them the better they run. The F45 is not a terribly long loco. You may be able to use them.
Mike

 

[TrainGuyRom]

I didn't know there is now sound in N scale. If I wasn't on such a tight budget, I would probably get some. Was it terribly expensive?

 

[fifer]

I didn't know there is now sound in N scale. If I wasn't on such a tight budget, I would probably get some. Was it terribly expensive?

Most of the MRC boards run around 70 to 80 dollars each.
Mike