Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

The rain puttered along through the afternoon and even though I got drafted for vacuume duty, I was able to wire up a decoder to the Roundhouse chassis that will house my RS3 Hammerhead.  Got everything loosely connected and put it on the track - forward, backward, light on backward....  no light forward.  Hmmph...

Could have been either side of the LED hookup, so I picked the easy (negative) side.  Did a continuity check between the decoder plug (white pin) and the negative LED lead... Nothin'.  Checked the solder joint after peeling back the shrink tube - looked fine.  Hit it with the iron and freed it up.  Still no continuity between the end of the wire and the plug!  Checked for a break in the wire - seemed fine.  Checked continuity between the front of the plug and the back - all good...  Wiggled that white wire at the connector and .... pop.  Out it came.  Bad crimp apparently.  Popped the empty socket out the back side and attempted to solder to the back of it, but it's really too small to solder to.  Since the green pin isn't functional in this decoder I popped that socket out and plugged it into the "white" socket of the connector, resoldered and shrunk to the LED and FINALLY - up and running.

Got things buttoned up but didn't install the couplers yet - still have that weathering to do, but the junior Frankenstein seems to run well by itself.  All hail the Hammer!