Wordless Wednesday #158

N&W (ex Illinois Terminal) SD-39's #2964, 2965 and 2963 work the Saginaw Mine on the Adena Branch at St. Clairsville, OH 1982

Wordless Wednesday #157

Continuing with the NYC/LEA&W theme from last week, here's NYC GP-7  #5917 at Minerva,Ohio on March 19,1967. Minerva was the NYC's home base for the mine runs to Piney Fork and other mines in the area. As with the Nickel Plate Road, non-dynamic brake equipped engines were sent into the hilly SE Ohio coal country. I'd like to know if the NYC ever entered Pine Valley through the W&LE/LEA&W connection to drop off cars?

Wordless Wednesday #155

Ex NKP SD-9 #2350 sans Mars light with Alpha Jet visitor Western Maryland GP-40 #3797 at Brewster, OH 1975

Wordless Wednesday #141

Change is underway, recently repainted SD-9 2345 sits with sister 351 still in NKP paint.

Wordless Wednesday #93

Wordless Wednesday #89

Have engine, will haul coal.

Wordless Wednesday #83

NKP SD-9 #351 in August 1962

National Train Day in Toledo

This past Saturday my family and I all piled in the Honda for a trip to Toledo for their National Train Day festivities.  Held in the old Toledo Central Union Terminal, this years events featured the usual real railroad equipment displays in addition to several modular train layouts and a few vendors selling train memorabilia and books.

The star of the show was Norfolk Southern's 9-1-1 Honoring First Responder's engine paying tribute to our Police, Firemen and EMS workers. I knew it was going to be there but kept it a surprise for Brendan who was thrilled to see it again.

Watco displayed its Ann Arbor Heritage engine. Which was neat since the last time I saw this railroad's paint was in the early 90's.

Amtrak displayed one of its heritage engines wearing a paint scheme from the 1970's. They also had several coaches, a cafe car and a sleeper car to walk through.

We also met my model railroader friend and fellow blogger Jeff Leslie at the Station. Those who follow my list of favorite blogs may recognize his Crooked River Rails page where after examining several passenger stations located on Ohio's crooked rivers, Jeff has settled on modeling the Toledo Central Union Terminal. An excellent choice due to the stations compact size and the large amount of surrounding industry, at least back in the 1950's.

Since this was his first trip to see what he's spent so much time researching, it was a treat to see his enthusiasm. While we walked around it was great to have our own personal expert to explain the history of the area and how the different remaining station buildings were used.

While we only stayed a few hours, we all had a good time and got to see another part of Ohio's extensive railroad history.

Upgrading the Athearn RTR SD40 with an iPhone 4 Speaker

When I first tried out my two N&W Athearn RTR SD40's with Soundtraxx DCC sound, I was happy with their performance and detail but felt the speakers left much to be desired. Most factory equipped sound units have speakers or speaker enclosures that can't produce a rich sound with at least the impression of low frequencies. I'd seen online where people using cell phone or tablet speakers have had surprising success making their model train engines sound more like the real thing. This thread in Model Railroad Hobbyist and others furthered my interest in these small speakers that might help my N&W SD40s sound more like their big brothers.

Last week I finally bought a couple iPhone 4 replacement speakers off eBay for $2.00 each to experiment with. Today they arrived so I installed one of them, took some pictures and made a comparison video to share along the way.

Factory Athearn speaker at top, iPhone 4 speaker at bottom.

The iPhone 4 speakers were way smaller than I thought which gave me hope they would easily fit inside the SD40's long hood. I guess I've forgotten how tiny the iPhone 4 was since getting my iPhone 6.

Testing the iPhone speaker out.

From the moment I temporarily hooked up the iPhone speaker to the SD40's decoder I was blown away at the amount and quality of sound this little thing was producing! And this was without the engine shell enclosing the speaker which would only help deepen the diesel sound.

A perfect fit on top the old speaker location. More weight could be added in the hole left by removing the factory speaker.

Just enough room to route the speaker and power truck wires around the speaker enclosure so they don't interfere with the shell.

Now for the video comparison, but first some disclaimers!

• The only programming these Athearn units had was their address changed to their respective engine number. 

• I have not changed any other CV values like EQ settings or volume. I will change the volume level soon because out of the box these engines are way too loud.

• The N&W SD40 1613 has the factory equipped Soundtraxx "Onboard RTR Sound" DCC Decoder and a factory speaker.

• The N&W SD40 1611 has the factory equipped Soundtraxx "Onboard RTR Sound" DCC Decoder and a new iPhone 4 replacement speaker. I soldered all contacts and taped the speaker unit to the metal weight where the old speaker was located.

• This is my first real YouTube video, how embarrassing!

In my opinion the factory speaker sounds really high pitched compared to the fuller more dimensional sound of the iPhone speaker. For only $2.00 the iPhone speaker was a big upgrade that will only get better once I play with the decoder settings. Especially once I lower that volume! Wow Athearn, let's revisit some of those factory settings!

I know some people disagree with using cell phone/sugar cube speakers over traditional cone speakers for sound fidelity reasons, but for tight installs and based on my what's left of my ears, this two dollar speaker wins hands down!

I do have some iPhone 5 speakers on the way to try out also. I've seen some mixed reviews on those in modeling forums, so I'll be sure to report my findings as well.