Fred, Amen to that. An extra 60 bucks for sound... OK. I suppose it is remote selectable, or is it? From that perspective, I guess its an operating car.
I posted to this board several years ago about adding realistic sound to every car, which I am sure is not a new idea in and of itself. I realized this had real potential after spending an hour or along side the BNSF railine in Creston, IA, and listening to the variety of cars passing by. Especially the combination of rain creaking (under different weights) and the actual sound from the cars themselves, like the rattle and clatter of aluminum automobile transports.
My suggestion was a bit more simple and designed from a "Point of View" or Personal Observer Perspective. That is from the perspective of standing along side a crossing or the like. My suggestion was a simple barcode reader track section that would read a barcode label sticker on the bottom of a car. As it passed over this, it would have its code read and a central processing unit would mix the sounds of cars as they passed by a fixed point, complete with fade in and fade out. The actual speakers could be enclosed in any number of RR buildings and other landscape pieces or the track itself! (Another suggestion is noise cancelling technology built into Fastrack, but lets not restart THAT discussion in this thread.)
This solution is a lot cheaper to design and deploy and it has the added flexibility to change labels easily. The sound library could be updated and downloaded from the internet... Nothing required in the cars themselves, and it has the added benefit of allowing you to "add sound" to match ALL of your existing rolling stock. It gives the illusion of trains passing into and out of your field of hearing.
Per the barcodes.. I was reminded of my own idea when I bought a gift card from Menards this Christmas to give to a friend and the "card" was actually a collectable scale race car with a barcode on its underside...
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