Sound Ideas?

[Worzels Works]

Well then all, the idle mind continues to wonder (getting excited now as 4 weeks until the return home and to modelling time) and this time to RC, as I intend to go down this route for loco power*, however the nagging question in my head is what are the sound possibilities for us in 4mm?

Without putting too much heavy thinking into it I know modern DCC decoders can run on DC while still giving limited sound functions, but the amount of 'bits' in the body rapidly increases by trying to wire in RC to the DC feed wires to get that working let alone the power draw that is going to add up to...

Has anyone had any further thoughts on this?

(*and lighting where appropriate as well as servo operated dinghams most likely for couplings)

[MickRalph]

I am working towards adding sound to French metre gauge railcars (in 1:55 scale on P4 trackwork), and adding directional lights and interior lighting; and hopefully operating an internal turntable carried by the railcars. I haven't yet got a working model to show, but hopefully something soon.

I got the idea from operating Barry Luck's Plumpton Green layout, where he uses an Adafruit soundcard to provide under-basebord ambient sound effects, with the ability to interupt these sounds to sound an engine whistle at appropriate times.

The soundcard is quite small, costing about £30, and it has 11 triggers to play individual, looping, or successive sounds. By adding wires to all the pads of the Rx from Micron, you can probably use 3 or 4 of the triggers.

The description of Barry's use of the soundcard is at http://www.lbscrmodels.co.uk/sound.html.

The description of the Adafruit board can be be found at here.

Mick Ralph

[hughesp87]

Very interesting reading in Barry's article. A question though - I presume that there was a standard code of whistles, but were there local variations? I'm specifically interested in LMS/BR lines in the Peak District.

Thanks for any information anyone can give.

[Noel]

I presume that there was a standard code of whistles, but were there local variations?

The standard codes were in the General Appendix, for the GWR at least [I don't have LMS or BR versions]. For BR WR, local instructions were in the relevant Sectional Appendix.

[hughesp87]

Thanks Noel. I think I have a copy of the appropriate Sectional Appendix somewhere.

Geraint