# layout sound, anybody do it?



## bmwr71 (Jan 30, 2010)

Unknown years back i joined a yahoo group for "layout sound". Being a G guy used to onboard sound being somewhat common, I was expecting that is what would be discussed and I would find some great ideas in that area. I was wrong, probably because perhaps everyone else on the list does smaller scale stuff. The stuff back in my earlier times for locomotives on this list was stationary until the DCC sound came around and then it was pretty much declared that that was what was done and little was said about it. What the idea was in layout sound is to have sounds from speakers hidden in the layout that would enhance the scenes like say logging sounds coming from a logging scene. The owner of the list just so happens to sell different discs with such "models", but also encourages people to make their own "sound models". Just wondered if any of you guys ever did such things in your layouts? Don't recall anyone speaking of it.

Doug


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## riderdan (Jan 2, 2014)

If you're talking about the sound systems they used to have the "locomotive" sounds come out through speakers strategically placed around the layout, I've never seen that mentioned in large scale. As you said, the locomotives and cars are big enough to hold electronics and a decent speaker, so it makes more sense to just put the sound in the train.

Somewhere (lost in my huge pile of links) I saw some posts about G-scale animation that included sound. I seem to recall hobos around a fire, with the sound of talking and fire noises and perhaps someplace with crickets chirping/bird sounds. I know I've also seen some layouts (in G) with sounds in the stations to announce train arrival/departures, etc.

<edit>I've found one of my links, it's to a MR blog This is more about animation than sound, but there are some articles about sound there, too.


I'm sure others with more knowledge (and better memories  ) will chime in.


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## toddalin (Jan 4, 2008)

I do it.

I have one of Dave Bodnar's MP3 conversions and I made a 3 minute track that can randomly start at any of 10 different places within that track each time the train returns to the station, so it doesn't get "stale" (i.e., continually starting at the same spot and getting to about the same spot when the train returns).

This is in stereo and the sounds of station activites (people, animals, creeking carts, etc.) are recorded on one channel with a speaker in the station.

The other channel has the sounds of a service facility with tools, compressors, hammering, grinding, etc. This speaker is in the water tank.

A tape player in one of the buildings plays music for the quartet in the park.

An MP3 player plays "Lowrider Music" and Cheech and Chong clips at the Gila Bend station where the Lowrider train parks.


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

I just built a water tank (along with several other members of the Cedar Valley Garden Railway Society) and as a joke I made a video of the spout operation and added a recording to the video of a toilet flushing when I pulled the chain on the spout.

That gave me a silly idea... I purchased a sound circuit board from Electronics123.com, Inc. that can record and play back up to 300 seconds of sounds and has 4 buttons for selecting from 4 different files and a speaker and runs from 3 AAA batteries. It is supposed to be used in plush toys where the buttons are hidden in the ears or paws of the toy to play a sound when the ear or paw is squeezed. They sell other types of boards that have other time limits or different numbers of buttons as well as other types of sensors to use in place of the buttons (light sensors, magnet switches, etc.) The board is programmed by plugging it into a USB port of a PC using their free software.

I programmed the "flush" sound and two different steam whistle sounds in it. Then just happened across a YouTube video of music from "Fiddler on the Roof"... this gave me the bright idea to make a small figure of a "fiddler" to put on the roof and add the sound of the first couple of bars of the "Tradition" song that the solo fiddler plays on the roof.










I am not sure how I am going to mount the buttons to trigger the 4 sounds, but I think I will have the fiddler stand on one of the buttons so that when it is touched the violin solo will play, Then replace 2 of the buttons with light sensors below the track where the engines will be when next to the water tank to play the whistle sounds and then as a joke have either pull chain play the flush sound.


The free software to load the sound board is poor at best. Not well documented and has many options that don't seem to do anything. To make matters worse, the board plugs into a USB port to be programmed, but my new Windows 10 PC does not recognize the board when I plug it in. I also have an old Winders XP laptop that does recognize the board, but the program is even worse running in XP... nearly every object in the program's window has vertical and horizontal scroll bars, including Buttons and Status boxes; and the scroll bars cover most of the text on the objects making it impossible to read them. I had to run the program on both PCs at the same time to be able to know what to click on to get it to do what I wanted.

Even worse (worser?) is that the old XP laptop has a burnt-out sound card so I cannot hear the files I pick to know if I have selected the file I want... I have to pick a file, download it to the circuit card and then make it play the sound to see if I got the one I wanted. Not hard to do, but a hassle none-the-less.


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## bmwr71 (Jan 30, 2010)

I had thought one could do a real simple logging scene on an outdoor railroad, just plant a bunch of Alberta spruces and hide a player and speaker in the scale woods and play the logging scene CD and observers would wonder what is going on inside the woods. I think a good sound recording playing would really make people think that things are happening in the buildings. I remember being at some rich guy's house in Newport, KY a bunch of years ago at a garden railways convention (Cincinnatti) tour and he had street sounds playing and that seemed to add more reality to the layout.

Doug


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## DennisB (Jan 2, 2008)

There is/was a company called Talking Products. These went into dolls and they also carried a line of infra red sound systems. The recorder is built in, runs on 3AAA batteries and holds about 300 seconds of recording. Don't need a computer to set it up. You use the computer to get the train or farm sounds off the net and hold the device up to your speakers to record. They used to sell for under $30 and there were 2 sizes, one small and one large for outdoor use. You would see them around Halloween time as a gag to create and record your own sounds. Hope this helps. Regards, Dennis.


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## Skeeterweazel (Feb 11, 2014)




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## Jerry McColgan (Feb 8, 2008)

I have a Pola Sawmill with a sound system & the layout has a sound system with a steam sound CD. In the dark it sounds like a real locomotive is coming.

Nothing fancy but it works for me.


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