Rhätia 125yr set comparison to Heidi

[PaulRhB]

I succumbed to the lgb 125 yr set with Rhätia and here's a quick comparison to its bigger sister Heidi.

The body is almost all new and captures the smaller, (and I think more elegant), Rhätia well.



Slightly shorter and much smaller tanks.


Nice pipework detail though still a small moulded on pipe on the left side. Just under the copper pipe here.


Comparison of their faces.


The coach is super with fine printing but the best improvement are the two open panoramas cars where all the metal frame is painted white/grey instead of the usual shiny metal.

The only niggle was all four items had details loose in the box. The loco had a cab step and wheel guard off, the coach had two seating units loose and around half the panoramics seat backs were off. Nothing was damaged and seems firm now clipped in do I think it's a mix of parts not fully clipped in plus the lack of foam on the front of the packet meaning any shock towards the card outer has little to absorb it.
A super set and particularly as the money saved by buying in Germany more than funded the esu sound chip and speaker.

 

[mike]

that dose look nice, i thought it just a repaint ect, but no.. and they look gretat toigether

 

[stockers]

Nice pair!
I too thought they were the same size (original and model) and great to see M/LGB producing such detail differences.

 

[PhilP]

Paul,
Any pictures of your decoder / speaker install at all? - I have five of the anniversary sets to do.. A head-start would be good.
PhilP.

 

[PaulRhB]

Not yet Phil I'm waiting for it to arrive. I'll be using ESU, another friend fitted the Marklin one and a sound unit and found it wouldn't work with serial MTS! I will post as soon as I do it.

 

[Nemo]

Thanks for the review Paul, looks very nice, Im tempted.

 

[PaulRhB]

We'll you might need to be quick as they're getting harder to find

 

[PhilP]

Not yet Phil I'm waiting for it to arrive. I'll be using ESU, another friend fitted the Marklin one and a sound unit and found it wouldn't work with serial MTS! I will post as soon as I do it.

Not a big surprise, really.. Serial MTS is very much 'legacy'.
Less than MTS III is beginning to show signs of incompatibility with a number of newer decoders etc.

 

[PaulRhB]

Yet Esu and Zimo both include it as a mode you can switch in! Chip has arrived in the UK and is heading to Mark for programming and dispatch so a job for later next week hopefully.

 

[stevedenver]

nice photos
I had no idea the Rhatia was so different

are the drive trains wheel spacing identical?

would love a side view of each if you're so inclined.

 

[PaulRhB]

Well I finally got round to fitting the decoder into Rhatia
7 screws, three each side of the body and one under the smokebox


The ESU XL decoder I used needs to sit in the middle of the socket as it only has 12 rather than 14 pins so there needs to be an empty pin socket at each end of the marklin interface, Thanks to Muns for that info If you were worried about fitting it wrong just blank the four corner sockets with small plastic rod so you can`t get the pins in

I bent the two speaker pins out at 90 deg and soldered the wires on and insulated them. I also had to bend out one pin, (sensor1 on the ESU diagram), on the aux side of the contacts as one socket is blanked off to stop the official decoder fitting the wrong way round.
Note the motor and speaker side of the decoder goes towards the front of the loco. The unused servo pins are seen closest the camera.



I found a problem re fitting the body and chopped all the pins down to sit the decoder lower and took off the snap off ends of the board, see the arrows above, that wasn`t the issue as it turned out! See below
The speaker can be fitted by undoing the two screws arrowed on the boiler and sliding out the speaker enclosure. I couldn`t use the ESU enclosure as it was too big but the body is effectively sealed so I put foam tape around the speaker rim to seal it to the slide out piece and the volume is LOUD


I found it was actually the body causing the cab to not seat down and had damaged the wires already. I took the rotary sander to the two areas highlighted and it sat down snuggly!


Just synching the chuffs to do.

 

[Nemo]

Great work Paul, any chance of a short running clip so that we can hear the sounds from that ESU decoder.

 

[PaulRhB]

Hopefully later in the week mate as we are having a running session at a friends on Thursday and I'm hoping to get there and the weather holds out! It's got the RhB G4/5 sound file so it sounds quite meaty

 

[PhilP]

Did you have any trouble sorting the lighting? - Appears the ESU does not have 'dedicated' lighting outputs as Massoth units do.

I ask, as I had to 'reverse' the front and rear light allocations when using a XLS-M1 on one of these loco's.

 

[PaulRhB]

No the lights worked straight off. The only thing was being careful to get it the right way round and figuring out why the body wouldn't go back on.
I tried the alternative speaker output as I couldn't find where the output off the socket was, gave up on that and just bent the main speaker pins 90°
Fine tuned the chuff on the rollers tonight and we will see how it sounds under load on Thursday hopefully

 

[PaulRhB]

Running on a friends garden railway last night.
http://youtu.be/Sh08ink__Z0

http://youtu.be/ycFYSyTUU88

http://youtu.be/KkAU9HicKaQ