An ad for an Atlas Engine on ebay listed Dalee sound. Is that Railsounds or something similar?
Thanks, Rob
There’s a Dallee electronics co. in Pa. that makes all kinds of electronic boards for toy trains,eunits, detection boards,etc. that’s the only one I know. and their stuff is made in USA.
Sounds like (no pun here) that it’s a sound car on steroids. Thanks for the input.
Atlas offered Dalee sound I believe in it’s first run of switchers. From what I remember these were great running engines that performed well at slow speeds. The one knock I believe was that the diesel sounds stopped when in neutral as there was no provision for a battery. Atlas at one time was offering TMCC upgrades that involved a new die cast chassis to go with the TMCC electronics.
Dave you are right… it is a Switcher I’m looking at. I just don’t know enough about that particular unit. I just like the road name. Do you know what year those were offered?
Rob
Majority of Dallee sounds are for DC operation. They have an AC sound system based on their LocoMatic control system which is independant of anyone else’s. LocoMatic has a control and sound system that uses a push button controller to access it’s features. It doesn’t conflict with TMCC, but the sounds/controls are not accessible from TMCC. As far as I know, only Atlas offered LocoMatic equipped loco’s.
I want to say around 99 or 2000. I checked Atlas’ site and it went back to 2001. They showed the AEM-7 which featured the Locomatic sound that Chuck mentioned. The switchers I’m sure just featured conventional sounds much like a QSI unit. The one drawback I believe was the fact that the sound went out in neutral. They did have a capicator that I guess was suppose to keep the sound from droping out but you needed to change directions quickly for it to work. I’ve seen these engines run and they run very well. A friend has one that he simply gutted and added TMCC to without sound and it’s a great runnner. The newer versions all have TMCC. Atlas was offering a conversion package at one time.
Its a nice looking engine hope you get it all depends thou on how high a reserve he has on it if its really worth it thou by time you add shipping.
I had two of the early Atlas SW-8/9 switchers with Dallee Sound. I really liked the engines - they looked fantastic, pulled well, and could run all day long at just a couple of scale mph. I want to add to the comments about the electronics in these early units - they have a REALLY touchy reverse unit and you have to just barely tap the reverse button to cycle it. Hold it any longer than that and when you release it, the engine goes through the startup sequence again. The TMCC upgrade with new chassis would take care of that but I think there still wasn’t room for a battery, so the sounds still would drop out when you cycled the reverse unit in conventional mode.
Regarding the sound quality, the speakers in these switchers are really small and don’t have very good fidelity. The early SW-8/9’s IMO do not sound anything like a non-turbocharged EMD prime mover. So my 2 cents’ worth is buy them for the appearance and the running qualities, not for the sound.
If you buy one and have trouble cycling the reverse unit, there most likely is NOTHING wrong with it - that’s just the nature of these engines. In fact, that is why I ultimately sold them. I had no problem cycling them myself, but my automatic reversing spur, where I wanted to run them, couldn’t do it because the electronic circuit’s “button press” was too long.
Atlas put Dallee sound in one other model that I can think of at the moment: The AEM-7/ALP44 electrics that have already been mentioned. That engine is great fun to run using the included Locomatic controller. I had one of these for several years and sold it along with my other contemporary models. These engines have better sound than the switchers, although it’s still not fantastic IMO.
Hope this helps, rather than adding to the confusion.
Joel