Blue tooth -Hearing aids

As it is currently configured no, as far as I know the bluetooth is strictly used to get the command signals from the phone or tablet to the command base or to the bluetooth receiver in the engine itself (lionchief with bluetooth) , the sounds are generated by the boards in the engine running to the speaker.  In theory, they could have a bluetooth transmitter that can take the output sent to the speaker and send it back to a paired hearing device (like your hearing aids) which would work either in command control or lion chief.

The other thing in theory they could do was send sound information back to the control device (the phone/ipad you are using) from the command base or the command board in the engine and the app would translate those into sound to send to let's say your hearing aid that is paired with the phone running the app. Bluetooth allows multiple active connections, so the phone/pad could handle the bluetooth to command control apparatus and to the hearing aid at the same time. I can't speak for the engineering of getting the sound back from the command apparatus, how hard or easy that would be, practicality, but it is possible from a bluetooth standpoint, I cannnot say if the command control appparatus on the Lionel side could be modified to send the sound back like that (the first idea I had really is a bag on the side of the current technology, since the sound would be basically a bluetooth transmitter hooked into the speaker connection transmitting to your hearing aid via its own bluetooth connection, totally independent of the command control link, and might even be possible for someone to hack). 

The BlueRail setup transmits the loco sounds separately from the command signals. I have placed small bluetooth speakers in several locos to get sound. The BlueRail app could send the sounds to a bluetooth device such as a hearing aid. This would be a simple arrangement.

Dave from Lionel  was kind enough to get back to me . He said and I quote "The way our Bluetooth trains work, you have to have a master and a slave device. In our trains the remote is a master and the train is the slave. A slave can not broadcast information to another master(i.e. the Bluetooth hearing aid). The technology is certainly possible but would require a much more capable(and more expensive) Bluetooth module. The Bluetooth controls in the trains are simply designed to be transmissions for controls and are not strong enough for audio transmissions. Thanks Dave" I responded as follows" Dear Dave, Thank you so much for your reply. Perhaps in the future costs will come down or the more expensive Bluetooth module could become an option in BTO engines. " So it seems my dream is possible but unlikely Still imagine I could really hear the trains and in some club in the future a large speaker could make it appear that you are hearing a full size engine vibrations and all.