A boxcar in distress

As mentioned in my last post, I received a Soundtraxx Tsunami Soundcar decoder, and have worked on a project to add sound to an older Atlas boxcar.
The other item I wanted to try is to get some practice with weathering, which , truth be told, I still find a little daunting.

Here are some of the results. I've decided against graffiti in this instance, but a later model will probably get that added.

Sound in freight and passenger cars

For sometime, sound decoders have been available for locomotives. The quality and variety of these is increasing gradually, and it was only a matter of time that these became available for cars.

While sound in cars is nothing new (Lionel amongst others, has been offering them for their models for a while now), the first commercially available sound (that I know of) for an HO scale model was the mechanical reefer released by Athearn last year.  This decoder is now released as a separate available decoder by Soundtraxx, it is called the Tsunami Soundcar. While I have not found a dealer in the UK that stocks this one yet, I have ordered one from the US to try out, and have received it. I'm in the process of doing an installation of it in a HO scale  53' Atlas boxcar.

The decoder also has lighting outputs, bell and horn sounds , so it is also suitable to be used for a passenger cab car, mechanical reefer sounds etc.  While this means that there's a lot in there that the majority of freight cars don't need, I doubt it would make a huge impact on price if the extra's weren't included.
With a bit of creativity, it might fit in some N scale cars too.

Here are a few video's of what it can do.
In a freight car.



In use in a variety of cars: