I have 2 stock cars and would like to add animal sounds to them, maybe horses, sheep or cows.
Who makes a good system, how easy is it to hook up and where can I get it?
I have seen some that are activated when the car tilts and a pendulum swings making contact setting the animals off.
How are other ones activated?
Todd,
I use the HQ modules from ITT Products for sounds in my sheep cars and also for industrial sounds in some of my structures. Here is the link:
They come with a built-in voltage regulator so I just run them off of a 14.8 volt LI-ion battery. Just add an 8-ohm speaker, a battery and a switch and you’re set to go. If you want to get fancy, you can replace the switch with a timer circuit (555 or equivalent) or a motion activated sensor.
Bob
Like Bob, I also use the HQ sound modules from ITT products.
I currently have HQ405 (Sheep) and HQ401 (Cattle) in two of my stock cars. I use a 9Volt battery and some small 8 ohm bass reflex speakers…had two left over from some HO scale projects (DLG8). I also installed a simple SPST on/off switch into the stock car.
They work great and, depending on your speaker, put out a nice amount of sound.
I always thought that cars producing animal sounds would be a good replacement for water boarding. Having listened to one for a solid hour on a club layout one time I was ready to snatch the car off the track and heave it across the room. I find them almost as annoying as locomotive sound systems that only produce two chuffs per driver rotation. Sorry if it offends but that’s my 2¢ worth !
Yes, layout sound is interesting, but eventually it gets annoying. I find that those with sound tend to have it way too loud for what it is. I should not hear the bar’s honky tonk piano in the next town. And I shouldn’t hear locomotive cab chatter on the other side of the layout.
As for 2 chuffs per revolution on steam locomotives, that doesn’t bother me as much. What does bother me is, on many sound boards, the sounds are all at the same volume. The whistle should be louder then the other sounds.
I use the ITT card but trigger it with a 555 timer so it moos about every 90 seconds.
I have cows and sheep. The cows hang out at the farm and sheep ride the rails in a stock car. The sheep use a mercury tilt switch and get excited when things get jerky.
An MP3 player triggered by approaching trains has speakers in the water tower for “servicing” sounds and station house for “domestic” sounds.
I just went simple. $5 Bluetooth speaker from Best Buy and set my phone for any sound I want, works great and can’t beat the price.
I agree that sound can get annoying that is why I would put in an OFF switch. Luckily my layout is big enough that the train and any sounds do fade off into the distance.
Putting in a mercury switch for intermitant sound triggering is a good idea.
I set what sound I have low, so it does fade into the background when I am far from it. But the locomotive chuffs tell me when things are going good, or bad, when I can’t see the train.
David, you are absolutely correct that whistles should be louder than chuffs. But my experience with an LGB Forney with factory sound was that the whistle was so loud it was obnoxious so I just kept the sound off. I had a LGB cattle car but I only ran it for guests. The sound wasn’t bad, but was very repetitious because the sound sequence was very short. I found it irritating. When watching trains, the only sound I really enjoyed was a soft chuff and a whistle at the far end of the layout that let me know the train was still running.
LGB had cow and sheep cars, track power kept them on all the time (9 volt batteries for power backup are optional for DC track power interruptions). I added DCC control with switch decoders from MRC that were only $7 on a sale. Nice feature of these decoders is the red and green leds for status (I know power is getting to the decoder!!).
These MRC decoders should work with airwire G3 also, but receiver cost could be prohibitive.