I bought a undecorated Stewart VO-1000 that I am getting ready to run.
I know NCE makes a drop in decoder but I was really looking for sound decoder for it. Does SoundTraxx make a decoder that would sound ok for it? To be honest I am not sure who made the prime mover for Baldwin so it is hard to figure out what it need. Same goes the horn I dont know what kind it has. I think there should be enough room above the front truck to mount a speaker and a baffle.
Also should I connect the led light using solder and wire or stick with the L.E.D legs/wires that rub the trace pad on the decoder?
I have a Stewart VO-660 with the copper tabs that make contact with the front and rear LEDs and it works just fine. If you are interested in installing sound in your VO-1000, Tim Smith @ Empire Northern Models is a good guy to talk to. He’s VERY knowledge about DCC, does terrific work, and has some of the best prices on the Internet. Here’s the link:
The reference I have says engine type “VO” or “608NA” depending on whether or not it was supercharded. So apparently they made their own. I don’t know of anyone who makes a sound unit with a Baldwin prime mover preloaded into the unit. So that means you will have to get one with programmable sounds and create your own.
I think you would be safe with a straight Wabco honker.
I can’t help you with that one. I have yet to take the shell of any of mine. For that matter I wonder if I have even had one out of the box…
Baldwin bought the DeLevergne company to build the diesel motors in their locos. There’d be a lot of difference in sound from a non-turbo EMD to a Baldwin - the EMDs are two-stroke motors while Baldwin, Alco, and GE are all 4-stroke.
I wouldn’t use an Alco though, Alcos have a very distinctive chug that says Alco.
Loksound has sound files for VO’s and 606/608SCs.
Well to that one I would say, “Anyone who knows anything about train engine sounds”. As rrinker says the engine sound would be way different. Further, the first generation EMDs also had a very strange cut off (cut out?), before they would rev-up out of the low throttle settings. It always sounds like the engine is going to die, and then suddenly it comes to life at the higher throttle setting. I’m using throttle setting in the loose sense here…
But if you don’t care, look into the sound system from an Atlas TrainMaster. While it is 16 cylinders instead of eight it is different enough from the mainstream EMD and ALCO that most would just know it was different not how it was different.
The cut off is transition, sort of like shifting gears in a car. The connection to the traction motors gets changed from series to series/parallel to parallel at different speeds. Check out the web page of operator manuals, it actually explains it in the manuals. Early locos were manual, in that the engineer had to move a level to change the setting. With each change, the generator output required to maintain speed and power changed, hence the diesel engine speed (which is controlled by the governor, NOT the throttle handle) would change. The SOundtraxx DSD-100LC el-cheapo decoder (for a sound decoder) has this which is why I am using it in my Stewart F7, it’s supposed to be a ‘generic’ diesel sound but it’s mostly EMD.
I looked at the Loksound site and found the entry for the baldwin-660. There wasnt a file to download with it however. Does that mean it is coming or was pulled or what?
I read somewhere that in England I think in a Trains magazine that “they had diesels that sounded just like Baldwins!” I live in Australia but I presume they were talking about English Electric locos which a) had air operated control systems b) had 96 volts auxiliary electrical systems.
If it is an English Electric sound, if you download a program called BVE ( which is a fantastic freeware from the cab simulator) there are a number of EE locomotives which should provide a sound file somehow… it is not 100% accurate in terms of how it responds to the throttle but sounds good.
I worked on them in South Australia and they were not that well conceived as an idea. The 800’s in particular seemed as if they put an engine built the conduit and frame around it and finally finished it off for a top heavy machine!