Large Scale Central

Worth continuing?

Modeling
#41

i wondered if anyone would spot that! That’s a homemade Thomas–It’s a wood and MDF pulltoy I got on ebay, shotgun-married to an old LGB mogul drive

(http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/westover/images/thomaslg.jpg)

Had to hollow the thing out and touch up the paint, make the whistles and bumpers and lantern and a few etceteras. I know, waste of a good mogul drive. Someday my daughter will outgrow Thomas and then I’ll repurpose the thing. But it was worth it. For certain kids, the sight of Thomas rolling out of the shed just has them hopping up and down with excitement I could not figure out a way to get sound into the little bastard, and anyway nobody makes a prototypical Thomas whistle. It was tough enough to get a 75 mhz TE receiver in there. It survived my daughter dropping it into the pond, and so did the TE receiver, to my amazement

#42

Mike,
Great idea you had in fabricating Thomas. I may try something similar. I’ve been looking for a Thomas…but what I find is too expensive for my budget.
Ralph

#43

We have a club member that has Thomas with Airwire control and battery power. Uses a Phoenix sound that works very convincingly. All Equipment is in Annie.

#44

Ralph I agree–I could not see paying the hundreds of dollars ebay sellers are asking for worn out examples of what was never very high quality when lionel issued it. Why Lionel doesn’t resissue the Thomas set, given the prices they command on ebay, is beyond me

I thought about using a trailing car for sound, but kids are always wanting to put different cars behind Thomas, and that would present some obvious problems. Ric, what did the guy use for a sound file?

#45

Oh yeah…try http://www.mylocosound.com $80 will give Thomas a voice!

#46

It is just a European tweet whistle. I may see the guy that did it tomorrow and I’ll see if I can get specific info.

#47

Thanks–Bart’s idea is a good one. Now if I can think of a way to place a speaker…