Graham Farish Class 47 DCC Conversion - Chinese Split Chassis

Mistakes may damage your locomotive, controller or other accessories. Use a multimeter to make absolutely sure you have completely isolated the motor from the track before testing. Always use the Programming Track for testing. Our guides are provided for reference only, and you proceed entirely at your own risk. Unsure about something - try our DCC Conversion Service instead.

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This guide covers the Chinese split chassis conversion method for the Graham Farish Class 47 diesel locos including:

• Class 47 47832 'Tamar' First Great Western 'Fag Packet' livery (371-226)

The conversion requires part of the chassis milling away to isolate the motor from the track power. Some split chassis arrangements also require some of the top milling out to make room for the decoder.

For older Poole-made versions of the Class 47 model, see the Class 47 Poole Chassis digihat guide.

Step 1 - Remove body

Remove the body by gently pulling upwards. Also remove the underfloor box.

Step 2 - Split the chassis in two

Unscrew both screws from the plastic nuts that are holding the halves together. Gently prise the two pieces apart, and carefully remove the two bogies and the drive shafts.

Step 3 - Prepare the motor

Remove the motor. Notice the way that the copper contacts on the motor touch the respective sides of the metal chassis. Power is conducted from the wheel pickups to the motor this way. With the motor out, solder a grey wire to one of the contacts and an orange wire to the other.

Step 4 - Remove part of the chassis

Using a Dremmel or a file, remove the part of chassis that was previously contacting the motor. This enables us to insert a DCC decoder between the track power pickup and the motor. Here you can see the area to remove before, and after.

Step 5 - Put the chassis back together

Refit the motor, being careful to check that there is no possibility that the chassis can touch the motor contacts where you previously soldered the grey and orange wires.

File away the black coating from where one of the screws will meet the chassis. As you put the two halves back together, trap a red and black wire at either side so they make an electrical contact with the chassis. These will become our track power feeds to the DCC decoder.

Step 6 - Fit decoder

Fix the decoder to the top of the chassis with some tape, black tack, or your other method of choice. There should be enough space to fit most decoders towards either end.

Step 7 - Test

Put the loco on your test track and read the loco ID. It should shuffle backwards and forwards, and then return the default loco ID of 3.

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