Arnold/Hornby U28C with ESU LokSound

[GGNInNScale]

I finally finished the conversion of an Arnold U28C to sound. I had a TCS EUN651 non-sound decoder, which plugged into the 6 pin jack on the main PCB in the engine. I wanted to add sound, but initially I could not find a narrow-enough decoder to fit in the shell. I found the 58923 decoder with the 6 pin plug in the ESU site and started to rebuild. It turned out that the plug assembly was not going to fit into the available volume. So, I went with a Next18 plug with open wires. I machined out both ends of the main frame to provide extra space. I designed a speaker case to fit onto an OWS 8x15mm speaker. I removed the bronze contact strips from the main PCB. I trimmed off the vertical contact pins on both trucks and soldered a wire inside the truck vertical walls (touchy...). Then, I soldered the pickup slider strip to the bronze contact strip. Probably could have just done this with a wire, but I did not want to bind the trucks.
Then I attached the decoder at one end with Kapton tape, and similarly the speaker. Both of these units are "underslung". I had to extend the speaker wires (yellow and green in the picture). The power and motor wires tuck nicely in the space between the main frame and the PCB. And yes, I lost the front rails somewhere on my bench... major search to ensue. I have the speaker case available on TinkerCad- look for Speaker case for U28C in the site index.
The unit sounds good and runs very smoothly, starts at 1 on my NCE PowerCab.