Last week I was invited to to an operating session at my friend Mike’s and while operating a job at one part of the section I got to thinking this would be a good area to have a dedicated industry switcher. This part of the layout is the second level so with a pretty good grade to get to it so you generally need two engines but once up the hill you a long consist is a hindrance.
I was also thinking “hey, I think I’ve got a switcher that’s currently sitting in a box I should dig that out for future ops sessions”. And I was pretty sure it had a decoder installed as well because I found some really tiny decoders. Well it turns out I have two SW1s (And I think at least one SW1500 but that’s another story) but this was how I found them:
Oh dear.
Well it turns out I’d converted one to DCC and found a significantly smaller decoder for the second one. But why were both disassembled? Well according to my blog the first one had a broken drive shaft (evidently common on this particular version of the SW1) and I had fixed it and then DCC converted it. I switched to the DZ126 decoder for the second because it was so much smaller and worked really well so I started converting the second one to the same decoder. So one was apart because it was mid-DCC install. But why was the other one apart? Well it turns out it now has the same fault the original did. Fortunately I have leftover parts from the first one to fix the second.
In my searching of boxes I also found I have some decals to letter Soo 320 (the black one) so maybe I’ll finally finish it.
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