whistle blow

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have hooked up my old lionel 682 and coal tender. I am using an American Flyer 22090 transformer and all is well except it doesn’t have a whistle button. How to I hook up something to get the whistle to blow??

I have a smaller lionel transformer but it doesn’t have enough power for the big loop of track.

Help,

Paul

2

Think you will have better luck over on the Classic Toy Trains section of these forums.

I remember Lionel had a switch that would activate a whistle, but not sure how they hooked up. Also not sure about using them with an AF transformer.

Good luck,

Richard

3

I had one of those. As I recall the whistle was triggered by a sudden increase in track power. Try suddenly ramming the throttle to full blast and then just as quickly back to its original position to see if that works.

4

Thanks, I’ll give that a try. Now that you say that, I think I remember that is how the old tranfomer/controller worked was by shooting extra power to the track. It had to be something like that since there were only 2 wires going to the track.

Paul

5

My understanding is that the whistle button – built into the transformer or separate – shoots a blast of DC current into the track and the fan that powers the whistle picks up on that. Not a surge of AC.

6

Hi!

All good advice before me…

Go to Classic Toy Trains section and pose the question again.

The whistle on Lionel was activated by a sudden burst of power (loved the sound).

Flyer was basically DC operated, Lionel was AC. Lionel and Flyer do not mix, and the advocates of each are as stubborn as the old “Ford vs. Chevy” contingent of years ago.