The Overland Hotel

The building that hides the speaker for the Carlin yard switcher sound is now finished.  This was a Design Preservations Models - Hayes Hardware kit.  The building itself was not modified as it fit nicely into the space I had for it.  

The theme of this building is that of an older hotel which has seen it's better days pass when the interstate highway was built.  It has been refurbished and has had a large neon sign installed on the roof that can been seen from the interstate highway in the hope of attracting business.

I had recently purchased a 3D printed set of 180 roof top details and used 9 of those on the roof of this building.  The animated sign if from Miller Engineering with the support structure being scratch built from styrene.  

The electronics for the sign clip into a plastic cap from a prescription bottle which is glued under the roof of the building.  The power wires for this go down through a hole in the bench work and are connected to a voltage regulator from Miller Engineer specifically for these signs.  The wires for the speaker also go through the same hole.

DCC Sound my way - Part 2

After doing a bunch of experimenting with DCC sound over several years I had decided that instead of installing sound decoders in my N scale locomotives I would use just a few as stationary sound decoders in choice locations addressed to the locomotive working in that area.

To start with, I wanted to have the sound for the yard switcher in Carlin yard.  One of the small speakers was placed inside of one of the buildings across the street from the yard about in the middle.  It was glued down to the base as shown here.

The building that will go here is a Design Preservation Models Hayes Hardware kit shown here half finished.  It will be a hotel when it's finished.  Look for a future post on that project. 

Because I sometimes change locomotives assigned to the Carlin yard, I would need to be able to program the sound decoder to an address matching the address of the locomotive.  I installed this control panel on the fascia which allows for this.  Thinking ahead, I also included control for the road switcher assigned to the Carlin yard as that will be a future step.  A cable for the programming output was run around the layout from the command station to this panel.

The Digitrax SFX0416 decoder is quite small and was placed within the bench work behind the control panel.  It is pointed out with a red arrow in the photo below.