I have an older Conventual Control Thomas Tank Engine and Annabel and Clarabel Cars. I want to add sound to the engine. I was thinking of adding a Railsounds Board and speaker to either Clarabel or Annabel cars. However, I need to figure out how to add a third rail pickup to the car. Does anyone know of way to do to accomplish this?
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I think the easiest thing would be to just run a thin jumper wire from the engine to the coach, normally in the TV shows Annie is First and Clarabel is last. There are tiny 2 wire plugs that I get at my local hobby shop very small that work well for adding jumpers so you can unplug Thomas from the coaches. On my Thomas and friends engines that I run at shows with the LionChief remote on the fence for the kids to run the trains; I have a jumper wire with the mentioned small plugs from Thomas/Percy/James/Diesel to trailing lighted flat cars with power pickups on both trucks to improve the electrical conductivity of the train when the kids start and stop it all the time in case a dirty section of track. The small wires and plugs have worked very well over many shows without coming apart or breaking! Plug shown below!
If anybody has ideas to power them, this is what the coaches look like from the bottom:
You will also need to add a ground pickup on the axels. A tether from the engine seems the simplest solution.
Thanks for the feedback guys. I agree that the tether may be the best way. I will have to see what my local hobby shop has. If my memory is correct, I have some older o gauge steam engines with tethers between tender and engine that were smaller in size. Does anyone know a part number for these smaller tethers?
@Roeschs1 posted:Does anyone know a part number for these smaller tethers?
Google "22 AWG 2 Pin JST Plug Connector Cable" for the perfect small connector sets that I use.
Thank you. I will
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