I know that DCC is the big thing, but I’m too old and too poor to convert. I would like to have some more sound. I currently have two oil storage tanks with diesel horn sound in them and two “chug chug” cars.
What other options are out there?
Is it possible and practical to have some sound installed in a steam or diesel loco without DCC?
I have had some sounds (farm, industrial, traffic) on tapes under certain parts of the layout, but they need to be started and stopped manually.
Thanks in advance for your ideas. You all have never disappointed me with your clever and humorous answers!
Broadway Limited’s Blue Line locomotives have sound systems that work on a DC layout if you also purchase their special controller, and the locomotives do not have DCC decoders in them.
I personally don’t own either of these products, but I have a friend who has the “city & country” version, and it seems to work pretty well. I thought Soundtraxx made a similar item, but I didn’t see it on their website.
You can have sound put in your DC locomotives, but by the time you go through the expense and hassle of all that, you might as well just switch to DCC anyway. Just my two cents…
Walter, you don’t need to spend $300.00 to try DCC. Nore do you have to fidle with all the VC of the decoder. If you want to get your feet wet try a Bachmann E-Z command. You can fid them on E-bay new for around $60.00 or less just shop around. I can run 4 BLI’s with sound and not lack for power. I have a few other engines that will draw a lot for power so I finaly went with a booster.
If you like some details on the E-Z let me know.
Far as the Blue Line, I have a GE AC 6000 UP and I must say I love it. Has the best Horn I have heard to date. I have a decoder in it and works fine.
The newer BLI will run with DC only with sound. My first one was a Class J. That is what got me hooked and then went DCC.
I have a MRC 312 Sound station and it helped. I no longer use after I went DCC. Something about the sound moving with the engine.
Walter, putting sound chips and speakers into a few favoured locomotives is an option, but if your engines are nearing the ends of their useful lives, you may want to look at some bargain QSI locomotives which operate dual-mode. The decoders are designed to sense which of the two types of current are provided to them. Others do this, but the reason I single out QSI is that some of the older BLI stock can be found for many fewer dollars than their original MSRPs. For example, trainworld.com had, until about six months ago, older J1 Hudsons from NYC that they were selling for USD$129…since raised to about $159 or thereabouts.
If you are kinda sweet on what you have and the road9s) you currently model, then your options are to by CDs and play them with speakers under the layout, or a similar system designed for under the layout, or try the Blueline as suggested by others earlier, Charles I think it was. There are cheap sound decoders to be had, but they are not the dual mode kind and will emit copious quantities of magic smoke if introduced to DC current.
The bottom line for having specific noises emitted from their appropriate engines is to use a decoder, and that won’t work without a speaker.
There is always the sounds one can make with their lips! Brummmm bummm bummm bummm bummmm
Sound in model trains existed long before anyone even concieved of DCC. For high quality you can watch ebay for PFM (mini-sound or Sound System 2) sound systems for steam locos or PBL for steam and diesel sounds. For mid range quality there is the original PFM sound system and Mark II system. There is the old Soundtraxx (don’t remember the unit name). For lesser quality systems there are the Modeltronics (laughable by today’s standards but better than what you have), and Minitronics makes some.
For stationary sounds see the ad for Innovative Train Technology Co. on page 95 of this months Model Railroader.
Atlas, BLI, and P2K offer locomotives with QARC decoders in them which will work on DC. The direction switch on a power pack will operate the horn and whistle, the Quantum Engineer allows access to programming for volume control of individual samples. Sound quality, okay.
Athearn Genesis locos will work on DC with sound, but use a different controller than the QE unit. No idea what happens when you mix Genesis and QARC locos on a single block. No rating, haven’t heard them, reviews don’t sound promising.
MRC makes a pair of devices for DC layout sound, the Synchro Steam and Diesel units. Sound quality, okay for diesel, barely ok for steam, the chuff gets repetitious.
MRC also makes DC standalone units including the “City/Country” unit. Save your money. The dog, and church bell are ok, horse, chicken and insects good once or twice, the rest, including repeating/looped sounds are pretty rough.
An old PC and sound card can do some amazing things. Many free programs allow you to map computer actions to keyboard sequences, and if your defaults are set correctly, just opening a wave or MP3 file will play it in Winamp. You can call up a limitless variety of sounds from here, weather, insects, birds, animals, civilization, even trains. You can trigger 16 bit 44.1 kHz CD quality whistles and horn sequences, start-ups and shutdowns, bypasses in stereo from either direction, bells and all the accessories you care to find samples for and program a trigger.
The sound quality from even a cheap PC and home quality amp and speakers just really sparkles, a foreground addition to your layout, a real plus, not filler or background.
In addition, a seperate cable out from the PC’s CD drive headphone jack (front panel), and a cheap mixer will allow you to mix background ambience CDs to playback for your layout. We have both daytime and nighttime CDs here, both have several different creek/waterfall samples panned from center to