Thanks, I'll give that a shot. I have two speakers mounted in the tender and there's plenty of room for the decoder in there as well.
In the tender is usually best - there's more room for a LARGE speaker with a LARGE enclosure (the bigger the better the sound). You don't run all the decoder wires to the loco, you need track pickups, motor leads, and headlight - 6 wires. Miniatronics and others make small connectors to use in the wires to allow you to disconnect everything - much the way it works for steam locos that come facotry equipped with sound. This way you don't have to mess around with weights in the boiler. Just moving them is as bad as REmoving them - balance is just as critical as overall weight for best pulling power.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I have one of the first runs of the Rivarossi Allegheny 2-6-6-6 (from around 2001?) and got a Digitrax Tsunami heavy steam decoder to put in it. The loco is DCC ready and has an NMRA 8-pin plug in the loco boiler, BUT, there does not appear to be much room in the boiler for the Tsunami. I'm thinking either the loco needs major mods to make room for the Tsunami, or I put the decoder in the tender and run the decoder plug wires to the the loco (there is enough wire length to do it). Has anyone else done this installation?