Just added the trolley line

Frank,

They sell these small Bluetooth speaker "cubes" that are roughly 1".  You could download some sounds onto your phone it and then trigger it with your phone.  I paid $10 for the one I have about 3 years ago.   

I bought it to have when my 5 yr old grandson comes to visit and run trains. I downloaded some crazy  sounds and play them at various times.  It is a lot of fun.

Ed

I use one of those programmable boards with a trolley bell MP3 loaded onto it, rigged with a small amp and speaker and crammed into a station building.  I trigger it with a Lionel 90 pushbutton... 

Mitch 

Ed, thanks, I guess I could hide the speaker under a building. Mitch, that sounds pretty neat. Where can I get one of those programmable sound boards?

thanks

Why not mount the amp and speaker under the benchwork rather than in the building itself?  No one will see it that way and it will still sound good.  

ChooChoo1972 posted:

Ed, thanks, I guess I could hide the speaker under a building. Mitch, that sounds pretty neat. Where can I get one of those programmable sound boards?

Check eBay.  That's where I got mine... 

Patrick1544 posted:

Why not mount the amp and speaker under the benchwork rather than in the building itself?  No one will see it that way and it will still sound good.  

In this particular case, it's a portable sound unit for train shows.   

Mitch 

Mitch, thanks any idea of what search terms to use on eBay, so far lots of stuff comes up.

ChooChoo1972 posted:

Mitch, thanks any idea of what search terms to use on eBay, so far lots of stuff comes up.

Sommat like this:  

https://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-M...l-sound/171387079553

I wired the speaker output to the amp, the power wires to a three-battery AAA holder and the pushbutton wires to the Lionel 90 pushbutton....

Mitch 

Mithc, thank you very much. I can think of many things to do with something like that.

My pleasure!

Mitch

Adding two more trolley lines tomorrow across this structure:

Oh, nice!  

ITT products has some modest trolley and cable car sounds

If you're a DIY enthusiast and don't mind working with low-cost electronic modules, you can cobble together an MP3 sound system more than suitable for layout sounds for less than $10.

There are dozens of MP3 player modules on eBay (free shipping) in various configurations - with speaker, without speaker, with memory, without memory (you add memory card), with amplifier, without amplifier (only drives earbuds), with power source (rechargeable battery), without power source (you supply DC power from battery or wall-wart).  

I'd think the average person has enough stuff lying around whereby this can be done for, say, $5.  Most guys have a spare speaker lying around,  you probably have an obsolete cellphone/smartphone with spare microSD flash card - you only need the minimal sized card (e.g., 64 MB - NOT GB!) for all the layout sound length you can imagine.  MP3 modules require DC voltage to operate - so if using AC Accessory voltage or track voltage you need to convert to DC.

Or as Shorling says, there are companies like ITT that put it all together:

If you're a DIY enthusiast, you can put together an arbitrarily unique layout sound using "free" audio editors like Audacity.

So you can piece together "free" downloadable MP3 trolley/transit sounds, station announcements ("next stop, Yankee Stadium!" or whatever you can imagine), city sounds, etc..  With MP3 player modules, even the smallest memory cards will have more capacity (hours or days of play time) than you can imagine.  Don't constrain yourself by cheap audio modules  limited to 10 sec or 30 sec of low-quality sound!

In case not obvious, one advantage of a roll-your-own layout or background MP3 sound player is you can include music.  I figure off-the-shelf layout sound modules couldn't afford the licensing fees.  So, for example, here's Judy Garland and "The Trolley Song" from a youtube video... you know the one: "Clang, clang, clang" went the trolley....

There are "free" converter programs that convert a youtube video to an MP3 audio file.  This song converted down to a ~5 MB MP3 file which I loaded onto the MicroSD Flash card.  Or you might be able to find the song already in MP3 format for download/purchase. 

Anyway, for purposes of demonstration, I also loaded MP3 files of two other train related songs - City of New Orleans (Guthrie) and Love Train (O'Jays).

The particular module shown in action has 4 buttons to control the player (Play/Pause, Next Song, Previous Song, Repeat).  If you only store 1 MP3 file, it will simply play that song over and over.  It also has the useful feature of automatically starting to play when power is initially applied.

As mentioned previously, there are "free" audio editor programs to work with MP3 files.  So, for example, you may have the entire soundtrack to Streetcar Named Desire and just want to certain portions.

Separately, in the video above I show another $1 MP3 player module (no audio amp) wired to a $1 stereo audio amplifier module.  The idea here is MP3 players handle stereo sounds.  With a stereo audio amp you can drive 2 separate speakers playing 2 completely independent audio tracks.  MP3 players with a single speaker and mono audio amp blend together the left and right channels.  But MP3 files can represent two completely unrelated sound tracks on the left and right channels.  So let's say you have too much time on your hands and an over-active imagination. On a point-to-point trolley, put one speaker at one end and the other speaker at the other end. 

ChooChoo, I acquired a several modules on Amazon that I'll eventually put together in a stock car but you can do it anywhere.  The first one is a Bluetooth receiver ($9.99) that you can stream to from your phone or use a either a TIF memory card or a standard USB thumb drive.  Hard to understand instructions but I got it to work pretty with streaming Bluetooth and line out to external amplified speaker.  I also got an amplifier board and a speaker for next to nothing.  If you can download a song and play it on your phone you can do this and play just about anything in digital format.  Need to be a bit tech savvy though.