I have a just a quick question regarding adding a station sounds card to a Williams passenger train set that I have.
Last night I noticed on the bottom of one of the cars there is a small sticker that says “station sounds”. So I popped the top off the car and found a small wiring hook-up feeding from the lighting harness.
I run my trains in conventional mode and use an old ZW for the power supply.
What are my options for adding a sound card? Where should go/look for the right sound card? Any suggestions and information is appreciated.
I never seen that and I have a fairly recent set of Passenger cars from williams. In fact I’ve never heard of them offering station sounds either. Now it’ll be a month or so befor bachmann takes over completely and ready to deal with the public but you might check with marty of www.MAPAJuntion.com hes the only one I know that basicly does Wiliams with a little of the others as he gets deals .
Thanks for the suggestion RT I will contact Ma & Pa Junction and ask them.
I will add some pictures of the notice on the bottom of the car and the wiring harness inside later today maybe that will make it easier for someone to make any other suggestions.
I have a Williams F-7 ABA diesel set and the sound system is in the unpowered B unit, my set is the nine unit El Capitan Sante FE set made about six to eight years ago by Williams. Also looking for the extra motors for a Williams F-7 diesel, contacted my Williams dealer in Stuart FL and he said the motors are on back order from China.
I purchased the cars new and I am pretty sure the hook-up is factory made because of the labeling on the bottom of the car.
Here are some crude pictures I was able to take on the fly this afternoon. Maybe these will help someone determine what options I have available.
Pic #1 The wiring harness inside the car, it is pretty simple as you can see in the picture below.
Pic# 2 The label on the bottom of the car (sorry about the out of focus shot) it says (Wired for Station Sounds".
Pic #3 The car in the box, it is part of the two car add on set. Both cars have the wiring harness and labels.
Thanks for looking and giving me some more ideas on where to look for the station sounds cards intended for use with these cars. I would imagine there must be some other Williams cars wired like these are. These cars also come with a vista dome and regular flat top for each of the two cars in this add on set. I thought that was kinda cool.
Wow, this is getting interesting. The mistake idea is something I had not considered. I will try to reach a couple of different Williams dealers and see if they can shed some light on this.
Apparently a few years ago Williams intended to come out with a station sounds cards but nothing materialized or was offered. This information came to me through the courtesy of Hollash Trains in Florida.
Looks like Williams wanted to give folks the option to add sound easily with their two-car add on package by including the wiring harness. It looks as though the “wired for station sounds” sticker placed on the bottom of the car was intentional and not a mistake.
A new question arises, would any other sound cards work that only need track power to operate?
I’ve never seen Lionel’s Station sounds chips for sale plus you would need the dummy receiver module (plus TMCC) to get this to work. MTH puts the stations sounds inside the loco’s. QSI used to make car sound boards but I haven’t seen them in years (and most were freight car sounds, e.g. cows/pigs).
If you really want “station” sounds, Z-Stuff makes a module you place in the station that you can use to trigger announcements based on bar codes you place under the cars. The module senses which codes and which direction the car is going in and can handle up to 16 trains.
For their O-gauge products, look down the home page for the second red caption. It refers you to QSI’s representative “The Scaled Tin Rail.” No website, but does have phone info.
Thanks Chuck & BF for the information on available alternatives for these cars and where to begin looking.
I think I will just let things sit for a while and not do anything with them. It seems a shame that Williams did not follow through with, what seems to be, their original intentions. Maybe with Bachman taking things over they will come up with something to offer.
That’s Immaculate Conception Church on the left, that was famously dragged to that location across the frozen Chena river by the namesake of my high school, Francis Monroe, SJ, “the Hercules of Alaska”.
Williams used to use QSI for some of their sound systems but has gotten away from QSI, I contacted their service department about the QSI sound board and was told this info, also that the newer True Blast 2 sounds was better than the QSI that they had used.