Layout Sound Recordings

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
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I’m in process of kitbashing the Wathers Electric Arc building within in the steel mill section of my layout, I already completed & detailed a connecting Walthers Rolling Mill & also scratach bulit an adjacent 3 story bag house for dust & emissions control. The electric arc furnace will be the last builing within the “mini mill”. Having worked as a charge crane operator in a mill back in the late 70’s, i have fist hand knowledge of how loud an electrai are furnace can be when the high powered electrodes are lowerd down into furnace lids 3 circular openings and the electrodes meet the cold scrap, this begins the scrap melting process which in a 80-100 ton arc furnce a single “heat” can take 2-3 hours in order to acheive a tempeture of 3,000 degrees, this process will also require mulitple loads of scrap steel bucket charges over the same period of time before the funcace “heat” can be tapped out into a very large hot ladle pot. As many of us RR modelers continue to seek realistic operations on our layouts, i decided to add a high intensity blue & white flashing kit (3mm leds) & a high intensity (3mm orange-red flame simulated (fire kit) inside the arc furnace itself, real life expamples of which can be found on Youtube videos. The last element of true operating realism i was missing was SOUND, after some reaserch i was abel to find professionals who can assist me with recordings on stock or custom sounds insatlled at my choice on board chips / and also mini high intesity speaker systems. The companies assting me with the sound electronics are Pricom Design, Fantasonics, & Scale Sound Sytems.

Lastly, in my opinion when considering adding sounds to a model RR layout, and there are many pre-recorded sounds to choose from, not to mention custom sounds as well, one has to keep in mind that our hobby is really all about running & operating trains, as the engines also sound. Bayway Terminal NJ &

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It may be a new skill to learn, but it is possible to reprogram a DCC sound decoder to match a limited number of sounds, so you would actually have control over each audio clip from your throttle.

If you plan to just have your sound effects always running in the background, just a separate record and playback system like you’ve suggested is probably best.

3

Years ago I bought the Steel Mill background sounds CD from Green Frog: (scroll down)

http://www.greenfrog.com/Digital_Media.shtml

I ripped the CD to an MP3 player and used a small set of powered computer speakers tucked under the steel mill area on my layout. It can play in a continuous loop if I desire.

You could use a sound editing program and pull some of the distinctive sounds off the CD and make “process-specific” playback but just having the general sounds play is fine for me.

I also have an Iowa Scaled Engineering sound module, not sure if they even offer it anymore§. I planned to use this at my drawbridge. You can load four different sounds (.wav IIRC) and play them back when triggered.

I plan to have a deep boat whistle, siren for the brigde warning and rumbling gear sounds for the bridge lifting.

Hope that helps, Ed

§ I don’t see it in their catalog any more.

4

thanks for the ISE suggestions, i also have an intermodal port and warehouse section that i would like to add sounds to, the Pricom Dream Player Pro also links to DCC controllers and offers muliple sound recordings on command.

Bayway Terminal

5

thanks, i have considered insatlling an MPS syytem as well, Youtube actaully sells a sound converter yiou can download off their videos. Bayway Terminal NJ