Mannyrock
I have two Lionel whistles from tenders mounted in a building with open windows on both of my layouts train boards and I have push button switches for both whistles at my control panels by each of three the Lionel LW transformers. The whistles are powered by one my two 12vac 30 to 40 watt transformers used mostly for building lights. These whistles do NOT have a relay an are connected directly to a 12vac transformer.The whistles blow every time not like a whistle tender that uses a dc relay to trigger the whistle. These relays depend on the tender pickups being clean and working and the relay contacts and pulling in to work making them iffy many times. This saves me lots of money too as I do not have to buy whistle coal tenders for my steam locomotives which number some 40 or so. I normally do not buy coal tenders and but make them from shells bought cheaply and make bases from steel building siding or roofing scraps and add trucks from train shows. I have made two Vanderbilt coal tenders recently from scratch using mailing tubes and junked coal tender shells. You can see them on my train layout post link I gave you before.
I have two Bachmann diesel horns that come in an oil or diesel storage tank also powered by 12 vac lighting transformer so I do not have to worry about buying working diesel horns in locos either. They have push button switches at all three LW' too.
The Lionel LW transformer is the most powerful single train transformer Lionel made. The LW will run two trains at a time and does so often on my layout that has two loops wired with relays to allow two train operation without one over taking the other. My three LW's only run trains. Lighting has its own transformers and the 31 Marx 1590 switches and uncoupling tracks have their own 14 vac transformer.
Charlie
