Homemade sound

It depends on how much you want to spend.  Are you starting from scratch and want to install a sound module?  How are you triggering the announcements?  I used a small recordable sound module to put sound into my Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. 

There's no way to change the Lionel canned announcements, if that's what you're asking.

This is a joke, but you could rig a small recorder in a box car and tow it behind the engine and use a remove to turn it on and off.

Corvettte (Paul)

"Sounds" like a Lionel 6-22999 or a 425 modified to accept an outside audio source might be of use to you.

Kind of expensive to take one of those apart.  For $13, you can have one of these modules, and cheaper if you buy a few.

http://store.bigdawgspromo.com...mp;products_id=12970

I take the batteries out and run them off a track powered 5V supply.

I'd like to do this too, but I'd be fine to have the sound coming from the station{s}.

One of the stations will be for the interurbans and I'd like to have it fire up sounds when the power comes back on{132 delayed stop station}....2 dings from a bell would be nice if it could be automated...but I can be a button pusher too. 

I think you mentioned this sound unit a while back John. Sorry, I forgot about it(now site is in favs.). Should it be mounted in a loco/tender or car, do have any ideas on remote triggering it in conventional cheaply too? I could figure something out, but some of the prices you find are incredible deals, not to mention your often "the guy who already did it".     

If you don't have a bell on your locomotive, you could use an electronic bell sense circuit on the tracks to trigger it using the bell button on the transformer.  I don't do conventional, so I haven't spent a lot of time sorting out issues in that environment.

Unconventional all right?   Sorry, about that assumption.  The bell isn't a bad idea, except I run a KW, 3- 1033s,..no bell button. And my pre-war Z, and A.Flyer 18B not even a whistle button. I know I can make one. But your comment did get me thinking(ouch); A hack-n-bashed radio control car might be promising for me. Something like those little radio shack "zip zaps"(like hot wheels sizzlers with a radio remote). And if the pointkings station is on a siding, magnets and reed switches wouldn't be awful to tip his first announcement, the other sounds could be tripped in sequence by adding a timed transistor switching circuit, or one left one right, ie a left and right side, set of magnets!  

Yep, one of those cheap RC cars would yield all the parts to do the deed.  Just connect a DC relay across the connections for the motor and you have a remote controlled relay.

You can add a cheap bell button to have the bell control, it's only a handful of diodes and a push-button switch.

The magnets could be used to trip position dependent announcements, that's a good idea.