The next project for my railroad will be this beautiful old Chesapeake and Ohio switcher. It's been sitting idle at the Muskegon Railroad Historical Society for years gathering dust. I took it home a couple of months ago convinced that I would be able to get it working again. I was able to get it to move like a champ after cleaning the wheels, oiling the motor, and adding some grease to its aging gears. It is a standard blue box Athearn unit, so converting it to DCC will mean a hard-wire job. Athearn makes the conversion process very simple compared to other manufacturers and I've done it to a number of them. The decoder I selected is a TCS #1465 KAT24 with Keep Alive. There is no sound involved, but adding large electrical components to these tiny locomotives is hard due to the limited amount of interior space. I'll also be adding a couple of surface mount LEDs for lighting. This switcher will look great doing yard work once it is back in tip top condition!
Unfortunately the TCS decoder I selected is physically too big to fit inside the cab. I'll probably end up using a Digitrax N-scale decoder instead. I did successfully install the surface-mount LED's with 1K ohm resisters.
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