I first tested the decoder as per Digitrax's instructions and followed all of their installation procedures.

NOTE: THIS CONVERSION MAY VOID ANY, OR ALL OF THE LGB WARRANTY

Getting started was the hardest part as this is my most expensive locomotive, but once I got the top off it was all down hill from there.

Finding the screws was hard and there are nine of them.

Behind the smoke on top of the boiler is the first and easiest one.

At the rear of the cab there are 6 small screws, 3 on each side and the four rear ones hold the cab on and the front two hold the back of the firebox on and these two do not need to come out.

Above the rear cylinder on the rear mechanism, beside a round tube coming down from the body is the most forward one. These two need to come out, one on each side. You will see they are on the separation line top from bottom.

The last two are behind the ones you just took out on the same mechanism just between the second and third driver. You may need to wiggle the wheels and mechanism back and forth to see them. I know its hard to explain, but once you have a close look it is obvious.

I found it was a little tight coming apart as one of the wires had been trapped and damaged on original assembly. I made a note to fix it later.

I first tested and identified all circuits and load tested the blocks (trucks) for lack of a better name.
 

Wire Colour	Yellow	Green	Brown		White
Front Truck	Motor +	Motor -		Right Wheel	Left Wheel
Rear Truck	Motor +	Motor -	Right Wheel		Left Wheel

 
 

Amps	Free amps	Stall amps
Front Truck	.24	2.8
Rear Truck	.26	2.9
Smoke unit 24 volt	.25
Sound Board	* .67 amps

* I had originally run the sound off the decoder wire F-6 which has a 200 ma rating. After giving some thought to the bank of condensers on the sound board and how long it would continue to run, after the power was turned off, I decided to test it to see the actual draw which I should of done in the first place. Too my surprise it had a draw of 670 ma on start up and eventually dropped back to just over 200 ma. I decided to add a relay to the circuit before I damaged the decoder now shown in the circuit below. Note Do Not forget the diode as recommended in the manual.

I checked out which plug on the sound board was for the bell and whistle and found the pin closest to the fireman's side was for the Bell and the pin closest to the engineers side was for the whistle. These were the three black wires. The brown and black wires plug was the chuff and the blue was the speaker, neither of which needed any changes.

I removed the existing board and removed the two LGB sockets for the blocks (trucks) to plug into and the socket for the sound unit to plug into.

I mounted the plugs on the board as per the diagram and wired the board as per the schematic.

I added two 2 pin plugs to the board, one for the headlight and one for the cab light.

I replaced the headlight and the cab light with 24-volt bulbs

I replaced the 5-volt smoke unit with a 24-volt unit.

I planned on mounting the board in the indention below the old board and used Velcro.

I drilled a whole in the weight at the front and mounted the DG580L there as per the diagram.

I connected the decoder wires to the board shortening them to length leaving enough just in case.

I connected F-1 and F-2 bell and whistle form the decoder directly to a three prong plug I had removed from the original board. I did not connect the center wire to anything as I found it not required.

I have a strip of joiners that have two screws in each section to join two wires together. I cut off two sections from the strip and made up a removable joiner for the smoke unit. The smoke wires go in one side and the large blue from the decoder and the decoder brown F-3 (which is the one amp circuit). When putting the two wires in I installed a diode across the smoke unit as out lined in the Digitrax manual.

I added a 2-prong plug one for the headlight wires and one for the cab light wires to connect to the new board.

The wired unit looks like this.

I tested the unit on the test rolls before I reinstalled the top. Since I forgot to take any internal photos I later had to remove the top.

It was much easier the second time.

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