SOUND ON WHEELS
George Dent plants Hornby’s new DCC sound-equipped van into a goods yard scene.
Hornby has taken the novel approach of incorporating a TTS decoder into a four-wheel ventilated van, allowing modellers to introduce ambient sounds to various parts of a layout. Boasting 29 different sounds, each can be triggered by pressing the function keys of a standard DCC controller. Up to three sounds can be played simultaneously and the volume of each can be adjusted in nine increments. The sounds are grouped into related scenarios: the banging and grinding of a workshop; the sounds of a steam locomotive arriving and departing from a station; shunting clanks and bumps of a goods yard (and a wheeltapper going about his business), and the crashing of signal levers. Also, there’s a range of more generic ambient sounds such as cats meowing, dogs barking, birds singing and owls hooting! Some sounds are presented as continuous loops (including passengers’ footsteps and random road traffic), while others are ‘single play’ outbursts, such as locomotive whistles and clanging buffers.
The wagon collects power from the rails via a simple set of copper wiper pick-ups bearing on the rear of each wheel. It is possible to operate the sounds while the wagon is being hauled around a layout, but the power collection doesn’t look to be wholly reliable. Accordingly, Hornby has taken the strategic decision to portray the van as a weathered, condemned wagon, so it will suit the role of an abandoned van at the end of a siding. Besides, the included sounds are much more suited to a stationary area, although shunting it from point to point in order to broadcast the various different sound groups would add plenty of operational interest to a layout. Alternatively, the van can be hard-wired to the layout’s main DCC track supply via a pair of wires soldered to the copper strips beneath the chassis. Threading these cables discreetly through the baseboard will ensure 100% reliable operation, rather than relying on the wheels alone collecting the ‘juice’. Soldering wires to the van’s pick-ups requires care, however, given that they’re mounted on a plastic underframe. The iron must not dwell on the copper strips for more than a second or two, lest the surrounding material melt. While many resin-cored solders include flux, in situations like this I find it beneficial to employ a tiny amount of a liquid, no-clean, acid-free flux to speed up the solder bond significantly. Be sure to wipe away any remaining residues with a damp cotton swab afterwards. The inside of the van can be accessed by squeezing the plastic tabs that fix the bodyshell to the chassis. There are no holes formed in the bodywork to help the sound escape, other than the small gaps between the body and chassis. As a result, the sounds are a little muffled and a few strategically placed holes drilled into the chassis floor might be beneficial. In order to achieve this, the speaker and circuitry would need to be removed beforehand – something that put me off trying it for myself.