So, in my still-continuing quest for articulated steam power that will pull my 10 cars up a two-percent grade, I've finally settled on the older 2-8-8-2 mallets from Rivorassi/AHM. Why? Well, a couple reasons. They're a fair bit less money, I've seen 'em pull the wall off two percent grades at the club, and once I finally get to that dream layout down the road I can have them pulling 25-car drags with one of the spectrum 2-6-6-2's on helper duty.

I've installed sound decoders in something more than 25 brass steam locomotives.  In most cases, this also involved installing a can motor and frequently replacing the gearbox in some of the older locomotives.  So I've been around the block a time or two.

I've been asked to do a DCC/Sound conversion for a relatively small PFM Climax locomotive.  This appears to be quite a challenge. I have not yet started the project, and would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions (other than "don't do it!") on the following key steps in the process:

I didn't want to disrupt the thread on smoke units so I decided to start a separate thread. It gave me a crazy idea though. What about these vape pens that are so prevalent these days? Seems like a very compact unit. Maybe some enterprising modeler could adapt one to produce vapor for a steamer. It seems to me that I saw a video of a larger scale loco that used water vapor but it might be possible to get the guts of one of the smaller vape pens in  an HO loco.

Dear MRHers, Matt H @ LokSound,

I've been pretty vocal previously about the ear-bleedingly obvious need for EQ in onboard sound decoders for some time now.

https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/15636

https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/28498

https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/17789