I’m putting the finishing touches on my (mostly) walthers SFC. I’m almost done with all of the lighting, interiors, etc., but I want to do something special with a couple of the cars and I have a few questions related to this.
has anyone tried the new soundtraxx sound car decoder? I think it would be cool to get some generator noise and brake squeal from a few of the cars. I’ve been thinking the diner (mid train) and the 6-6-4 sleeper (end of train) would be good candidates, but would these cars have had an audible generator? What other cars would be good, maybe a hi-level coach?
I think most passenger cars drew their electrical power from the locomotive and did not have individual generators, since the locomotives designed for passnger train service back in those days would have had auxiliary electrical systems and steam generators for heating and lights.
Today’s excursion trains have a generator car immediately behind the locomotive and or mid-train because modern locomotives are not designed with passenger service in mind.
I don’t think Head-end-power really took off until amtrak began to order all-electric amfleet cars in the mid 1970’s. Before that I know there was some combination of 32vDC batteries powered by either axle driven generators or some sort of combustion driven generators. But i’m not sure which cars would have had combustion generators vs. axle driven generators or if they were able to share the power through the trainline as you suggest.
I believe the other cars (non Hi-Levels) derived their electrical power from steam heating. Although I’m not 100% sure as I know a lot more about the Hi-Levels. But I do know that Santa Fe did not use HEP.
Each Hi-Level car had its own onboard diesel generator. That is what the exhaust stack on the car end is for. The Hi-Level diner had two generators and two exhaust stacks, one on each end of the car.
The Hi-Level coaches and lounge used a 40-kw Caterpillar D-315 diesel generator. The Diner used two 60-kw Caterpillar D-318 generators.
Since you’re modeling the San Francisco Chief, you’ll only have Hi-Level coaches (step-up and standard) in the consist. No Hi-Level lounge or diner.
Found this online video of a 1950 Cat D-315. So likely what the Hi-Level coach and lounge generators would have sounded like. Try your best to ignore the ranting (somewhat nsfw) of the guy talking in the video.
I’m not sure if the Soundtraxx generator sound is similar.
A while back I made a custom sound set for some ATSF mechanical reefers on my layout using a Digitrax SoundBug. I thought about doing the same thing for my Hi-levels (I run the El Capitan). Now Soundtraxx has kind of made that job a little easier.
The air conditioning used on some cars was a steam ejector system as a source of cooling, and of course the steam provided heating. I think ATSF used this system on at least some cars.
Electrical power came from batteries charged by generators driven from the axles and this provided lighting and power for the air circulating fans and on some cars this power ran conventional air conditioning.
Steam was never used to drive turbines on the cars, althougfh small turbines on steam locomotives powered the lights (and on the SP Daylights, electro-pneumatic brakes.)
I think the full domes had diesel generators like the High Levels to cope with the high air condirioning load. So a full dome would be a good car to fit a sound system to.
Great information guys, thanks for hopping on this. I had a feeling about those axle driven generators- too bad. Sounds like one of the hi-level coaches and the big dome are going to be the best for this, but what about the diner? Surely the diner (36 seat) had to have some supplementary power for when they were getting ready at the station, I can’t imagine running off batteries for that. Of course, luck would have it that all of those cars are right next to each other in the consist, would have been nice to spread the sound cars out a little bit.
Also, I did find one picture of a “San Francisco Chief” drumhead. The kicker is that it was on a hi-level coach (non step down). I’ve never seen pictures of the train or a consist list where the hi-levels were on the rear of the train. So I guess that just brings up more questions. Maybe this is why Walthers didn’t offer one of the cars with a drumhead - they probably couldn’t figure out which one it went on!
I believe that picture with the drumhead on the Hi-Level coach was on a special display train of the new Hi-Level equipment that went to San Francisco.
I also am working on the SF Chief. Thanks for the info everyone. I would like to know if anyone has ideas on interior colors, seats, walls, floors and sleeper berths. I used the Trainworks kits on most of the El Capitan cars, and the Super chief I referenced the old ads that are easily “Googled”, along with some train art Indian themed murals on a few of the walls in the cars. I know that most of the Walthers cars in the Name-Train set are new kits so I don’t expect them to have identical interior colors. Thanks.
I found this ad for a Santa Fe Big Dome that shows the interior colors nicely (pretty much the typical Santa Fe interior color scheme of various earth tones):
It was at this website which may have more resources on interior colors. I didn’t look at every page and there are lots to look at:
