Chris has a new video up. Love the Spongebob train for its silliness, but what I like more is getting kids involved in the hobby. Yes, sometimes it means we have ribbons and other decorations on our trains. Other times there's the driver training factor, where you're lunging for the throttle to keep your locomotive from plowing through the barrier and onto the floor.
But do it right? Your kids (or grandkids) will remember playing with you and how fun that was. To me, that's worth a busted engine or three.
What you need is the operating Spongebob boxcar, and I modified it using an MTH whistle control board and added the soundcard from the caboose into one car so it can be triggered anywhere on the layout using conventional bell or whistle (depending on how you wire the polarity). The song is longer than the cycle of the door opening but I just leave the other side door open on the car so the sound can escape anyway as it goes around the layout.
https://mthtrains.com/30-79068
Then head on over the MTH parts site. https://www.mthpartsandsales.com
Plus a standard air whistle control PCB that outputs a rectified DC voltage for a fan motor when it sees the DC offset of typical bell or whistle control (depending on input polarity). Red plug goes to the track power, yellow is the DC output when triggered- this is exactly how the MTH Premier caboose works to send out the signalman as well. Again, all they do is plug the output of this whistle board, into the input of the operating car relay control board where the sliding pickup shoes plug in. The other input to that relay board is to the pickup rollers for normal constant track power. That's how the unit self cycles to the closed parking position. The trigger input powers it just long enough to get over the parking position and begin the cycle.
Part "AF1200000" (unfortunately out of stock)
And this cool board is the sounds "AF1200000" In stock at the moment. Again, this board is triggered by bell or whistle command input from your transformer. Power in is the socket by the small rectifier and capacitor, speaker out is the socket under the long chip.
And then a small 8 Ohm enclosed speaker
