I have a small Fleet of Turbines on my Model RR. I have a Baby-Blow Turbine (#51 4500hp GTEL) HO Scale made in the 1980’s Athearn Powered all Axels, DJ Peters Company. Baby Blow Veranda Turbine (# 66 4500 hp GTEL) HO Scale Lionel w/DCC and Sound. My Latest aquisition is a Super Turbine (#15 8500 Hp GTEL) HO Scale Kitbashed/homemade with Mishami(?) motors using Athearn PA Mechanisms. It has 2 units plus the Tender. I got the Turbine off of EBay and it is on it’s way. I am pretty sure that the bodies were scratch-built straight on top of the Athearn PA’s and I know I will have to modify them for DCC (isolating rames etc). What I really want is to go all the way with this model and add sound, I figure I can add a speaker in the tender. The thing that really has be scratching my head is there a soundboard out there for a Gas Turbine? I know I could probab;y grab one off of a Lionel Turbine but I don’t want to spoil a nice model. Is the decoder availible seperately? I did a search online for sound for Turbines and the best sugestion I saw was to use a GG-1 decoder for great horns and bells and to just have a vacuum under the layout when I run my Turbine. Any ideas?
Lok Sound decoders can be programmed to run any sound file. I don’t know the particulars and customer support seems to be a weak point with Lok, unless you read German, but this should give you the capability to achieve what you need. Then the trick will be to get a good soundfile of the turbines to upload. Being an Air Force brat, I can just imagine they sound different, but I have no persoanl experience with turbine sounds, only jet sounds.
Jet sounds are, in fact, gas turbine sounds. A turbo-prop is a jet enegine geared to a propeller instead of the generator that is found in a gas turbine locomotive.
I have one of the Lionel Tubines and it has the QSI sound installed in it. It is not perfect ,but the sound chip will be availble on the updated list for QSI improved sound chips. You should be able to purchase the chip and install it in a standard QSI electronics in the near future and have the sound for your turbines.
I am not sure if the Electronics is available as an end item, but some of the BLI engines are so cheap that you could use the package out of one of those and install the chip into it.
I think Loksound is your best bet. I seem to remember they actually have the sounds for that locomotive although I’m not 100% sure on that. Plus they sound better and have a better drive circuit than QSI.