Sound in a Model Power 4-4-0

[dnhouston]

I decided to take the plunge into sound .. at least as an experiment to see how it works in N scale.

I started with a Model Power 4-4-0 that was already DCC, purchased a soundtrax micro-tsunami and the largest speaker I thought would fit into the tender.  I replaced the original decoder with the soundtrax, soldered on the speaker and lo-and-behold it all worked!  There was just one problem, in order to make room for the new decoder and speaker, I had to remove the large weight originally installed in the tender and without it, the electrical pickup (which was marginal before) was awful.  The engine would sputter and jump.  Simply not acceptable.

I did some research and found that several people had converted the tender to use the Kato caboose trucks.  So that's what I set off to do.

Here is the tender, taken apart for the second time, with the floor drilled out for the new trucks


Here you can see the difference between the MP trucks and the Kato trucks.  Namely that the Kato trucks have electrical pickup on all 4 wheels where the MP trucks only use two.


Here's a closeup of the milled tender floor and the new truck


After attaching the new trucks, I wired it all up again.  Luckily the Model Power already has everything setup to be done in the tender, so I didn't need to even open the engine shell.


Here is what it looks like with everything all folded in and ready.


In order to make room for everything, I removed the molded-in coal load, and the original weight.  So now I added some weight back.  Here I plugged the inside back of the tender


and the front as well


Here it is all back together.  The speaker sits about even with the top of the coal bunker.  I am planning to stretch some pantyhose material over the bunker and then add a light coal load.

(Sorry about the focus on this one) :-[

I uploaded a video so you can hear the sound

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All the sound is coming from the chip using the default settings and the microphone on the camera

(6/19/2013 - Fixed the broken picture links)

[tom mann]

Really, really neat!

[bsoplinger]

Now you'll need to download the manual for the thing, its only a hundred or so pages, so you can learn how to make fireman Fred come on and do the coal shoveling sound and the open the hatch and take on water sound

[Dave V]

Wow!  Which Soundtraxx decoder did you use?

[dnhouston]

Micro Tsunami Light Steam #826001

Yeah, I've looked at the manual, it's huge.  You can custom configure everything, even which functions control which sounds.  Tonight I'm going to try out all the different bell and whistle sounds to determine which I like the best.

[bsoplinger]

Micro Tsunami Light Steam #826001

Yeah, I've looked at the manual, it's huge.  You can custom configure everything, even which functions control which sounds.  Tonight I'm going to try out all the different bell and whistle sounds to determine which I like the best.

For $140 list, it'd better do lotsa things. Then again, compared to the MRC 'steam' (they only offer 1 choice) decoder it really does sound amazingly better. I miss the bigger (compared to the Micro Tsunami) but better sounding (than the MRC) DSD LC90, which could be shoehorned into bigger N tenders as a cheaper alternative, coming in at $80 list vs the MRC at about the same list price.

[Dave V]

Hmmm....

The 210F75 tender I built for my PRR M1 4-8-2 has more than adequate room for one of these.

But at $140 list, it just ain't in the budget.

Looks like I'll have to use the organic sound system.  It's cheap and doesn't have to fit onboard the loco.  Say it with me: "chugga chugga chugga choo-choo...!"

[Chulvis]

Wow...nice work. Amazing that it all fit in there as well as it does. Sounds good too.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Wow, my mind is now blown.

That's AWESOME.

[Sokramiketes]

Nice tight installation.  Since there's no real room for a speaker enclosure, you can add a plate to the top of the coal bunker that would fill the gaps between the sides of the speaker and the shell, thus using the whole tender as the enclosure.  Don't forget to put some silicone sealer in the mounting holes on the speaker to keep the enclosure air tight.  This will help it sound even better.