I finally made the leap into the modern world of sound-equipped model railroading.
I decided to do the 2-6-0 first. Despite being Bachmann's "low end" On30 engine, number 27 is a quiet and smooth runner, and it comes sound ready with a speaker already installed. In theory, you could buy a sound module that just plugs in on top of the DCC decoder, but in reality those sound modules are out of production, hard to find, and expensive. It was actually cheaper to buy a Soundtraxx TSU-BH2 steam decoder.
Installation was just a matter of unsoldering the wires from the pads on the factory decoder one at a time and soldering them to the corresponding pads on the TSU-BH2. It took me maybe 15 minutes, easy peasy, and it worked right away.
Another couple of minutes to reprogram the decoder address, and I was in business.
I'm still experimenting with the settings. The factory speaker has no baffle and sounds a little toylike, so I may eventually replace it with a better one. But for now I'm having fun playing with it.
Makes me want to do the same thing with the 4-4-0's. A company called XLS Systems, which apparently made decoders for MRC (https://xlsystemsdcc.com/) sells a steam sound decoder with a speaker for around $35. For the price, I might try one. It's tempting to go with the full Soundtraxx treatment, but three times as expensive.
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