QSI Animal Sounds question

They made stock cars with chicken.cow, pig and turkey sounds utilizing traditional size rolling stock in a variety of road names. The car required a 9 volt battery installed and had an on off switch in side the car door.I have the cow and chicken cars. They also made a Pennsy merchandise car which had a breaking glass sound added. The circuit in the car worked on the movement of a bearing going back and forth. They were great for the time. Later MTH in its beginning used QSI sound technology to make their sound boxes. All of the above can be found in aftermarket sales and at train shows.

And they also made cars with circus sounds, Halloween sounds and Christmas sounds.  They used either regular production or custom decorated Frank’s Roundhouse bodies made from the original AMT tooling.  We’ve been able to document 17 different cars that QSI sold.  Many of the cars came in 4 different road numbers.  See the link below for more information. 

They also sold some Lionel stock cars with their sound boards.  I believe they still have a booth in the Orange Hall at York. 

Click here: Frank's Roundhouse QSI Rolling Stock

Bill

I really admired those cars back then & would have badly loved to had one or two.  I recall that, for the time, they were pretty pricy (yes I know, everyone moans about price).  But, I think they were close to, if not, $100 each, quite a bit for the early 90's.  I seem to think QSI also sold individual sound boards that could be added to your own rolling stock & that those were more affordable.  Anyone have the pricing information from back then?

There were at least 3 different variations on the cattle sounds.  I have "Cows 1" and "Cows 3" along with a dual Chickens/Turkeys sound board.

Ron: Yes, they were very expensive.  Here are scans of some of their ads from the 1990’s with prices.  These are from that other magazine.

Bill

Does anyone know why they disappeared?  Too expensive?,  Poor sales?  I would think that there would be a market for these sounds today - just the sound modules by themselves that could be placed in a car of your choice.

As shown in the second ad I posted, they sold the sound units separately for $84.00 while their price of a complete car with a module installed was $99.00.  I suspect those prices kept sales low.  During that time Right-of-Way Industries was also offering Franks Roundhouse cars with animal sound modules.  I don’t have any price info on their cars, though.  

Another reason could be that they were hard to hear.  If you have more than one train running you probably won’t hear the sounds at all.  They are easiest to hear when you have only one train running, especially when you stop it.  Then you hear the sounds for a few seconds until the pendulum inside stops swinging.

The cars and also the separate sound modules show up on eBay quite often and sell for a lot less than they did originally.

With today’s technology the sound modules should be much less expensive.

Bill

I picked up one of these cars actually visited the company in Oregon those many years ago and purchased a Circus car with Lions or Elephants can turn a switch to choose/ Still have it and run it with the circus train. There is a volume control and you can adjust it to be heard if you are near by.

Does not work well with a busy railway lots of trains running on noisy track something like Fastrak you would never hear it. But with a good sound deadening road bed and good quality low noise track you can hear it even at a show. Car was heavy though.

At the time I also purchased alternate chips that would allow other sounds by switching the sound chips on the board.

I picked up another animal sound unit and my favorite the "Breaking glass chip"

This is lots of fun if you are switching. The harder you bang the car around the more glass you hear falling and breaking.

Great for someone new to your railway tell them they must do some switching give them a jumpy engine and some tight curves and then give them a hard time as the crates of glass go crashing down in the car!!!!