I’m really new to this and when I finish my layout, I’d like to add sound. Nothing to fancy, just some background noise. I’m modeling a late 1800 western town. I’m looking for something with piano playing, steam engine, cows, people, ect. I’m not exactly sure what I’m really looking for. Can anyone head me in the right direction? Jeff
Yes, a company called Innovative Train Technology Corporation (ITTC) makes a Honky Tonk piano, cows, sheep, and other sound modules. They cost around $30 for two different sounds. You can hear the available sounds on-line at Loy’s Toys and the ITTC Web sites. At Loy’s Toys (www.loystoys.com) click on Products by Type, then Sound, and go from there.
if it were me looking for such thing I would find all the sounds on the internet and mix them with one of the many sound mixing software programs then record it to a cd or a endless loop tape
I went out to the ITTC site. I wasn’t looking for something to put in the cars itself, I was just looking for a CD that I can play in the background. Though someday, it would be really cool to switch over. Does anyone know of any manufactures of background noise cd’s?
What about the “full” soundtrack from a western movie - no just the music, but the background sounds? If your VCR or DVD has stereo out, you should be able to at least put some sounds on cassette (remember those…?).
There is a small layout that I see at local shows that has a car tape deck built into it to give sounds to the amusement park and industries on the layout. Neat idea…
Andrew
does this mean i can watch lonesome dove again? sounds like a good saturday to me?
Try gunsmoke for sounds like festus hollarin’ at doc or dennis weaver 's “marshal dillion! …marshal dillion!”. There was one episode of gunsmoke all about trains where they got stuck in a blizzard. There was also a John Wayne movie where they stole a train in the war of northern aggression… Lots of sounds on movies, all you need is a patch cord and tape deck. You could then rip it to cd . FRED
Don’t forget some bang-bangs! Also, it would be super-cool if you could somehow coordinate the sounds with actual events, like maybe animate someone going into a saloon, and the piano music would get louder when the saloon doors were open.
I gotta ask, but what kind of sound would one expect form a cow in the 1800’s???
While I understand that the grammar and syntax of human languages is fluid and ephemeral that the Classical (as opposed to Modern) Bovic has remained stable over the years.
And by the fact that Cows have hooves instead of hands the information revolution has passed these poor creatures by.
Doug, in Utah
(could not resist)
The fact that cows lived in the 1800’s, without hands is curious, because according to the history books those hefty bovines taught us all we know today about the beef industry. Why without those heroic elders of the steak world, we would all be ordering sheep at the local steak and shake. Come to think of it, I never have seen STEAK on the menu, but thats another story. All the same , how would they have passed on all that great eating technology without hands. None of us were there so how would we know. Maybe they were at one time some higher level inteligence sent on UFO’s to scope us out as a possible food supply and THE LONE RANGER got the drop on them. Ya just never know.[:D][:D][:D]
At the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club’s layout (http://users.ssvecnet.com/cacole) I used the Innovative Train Technologies sound modules with the speakers mounted under the desired scene (i.e., in the center of Tombstone, Arizona under a saloon or pen full of cattle) with a push-button switch on the fascia board so visitors can activate the sound effects as they gawk at the layout. SInce there’s no reason or need to have the sounds playing continually (this could get to be quite a distracting aggravation) visitors can pu***he buttons to hear the sound effects, which then turn off automatically after 30 seconds. Each switch is labeled as to what sound effect it controls. In one scene where there are both cattle and sheep in the pens at a rail loading facility, I used a single-pole, double-throw, center-off, momentary toggle switch with appropriate labels, since these two sounds cannot be played simultaneously. For the waterfall, a simple on-off toggle switch is used and the ITTC module is wired for continuous looped playback as long as that switch is on. I CD player, MP3 player, etc. could probably be used, too, and sound effects can be found on the Internet or, as other people have mentioned, can be copied from a video tape or DVD, but would you really like to hear the dialog over and over?
GUN FIRE, smashin’ glass on the bar, creaking saloon gates, bar fights… and don’t forget the bang-aaugggh-THUMMP.
Lets be serious (as I have not)
- Chickens clucking, until very recently folks kept domestic fowl for eggs and sunday dinner.
- sounds of gates banging in the wind.
- squeaking sounds of windmills.
- telegraph receiver sounds from the railroad station.
- sounds of carpenter’s hand tools and cabinet makers.
- songs of field workers and section gangs to keep time for unified work. (a story in Trains a while back detailed this.
- sounds of the one cow or domestic goat for milk in a big backyard.
the sounds of scissors and hand clippers at the barber shop. - the sounds of birds singing of assorted kinds.
and a host of others.
Doug, in Utah
could you add a spitoon Doug???
(great list)