gunrunnerjohn & others:
I did a test fit of the horn/bell sound card and its 2-inch round speaker inside my Lionel 520 Boxcab today. As requested, pix are attached. The sound card could be squeezed inside the cab shell, although it would be a very tight fit -- taking care to avoid any part of the sound card circuitry touching the motor or the grounded frame. The speaker is the problem; its 2-inch diameter "spills over" the metal chassis platform by a 1/4 inch or so; the shell can't be re-installed properly. A photo shows the "spill over." There's no room inside the cab to mount the speaker on the inside surface of the roof.
Maybe an OVAL speaker is available; perhaps 2 inches LONG by 1-1/2 inches WIDE, at 8 ohms. That size would fit, and soldering the two wires from the sound card to it would be easy to do.
Another approach ...
The Lionel SECURITY CAR (3535) has an onboard cab that looks identical (except for its decor and roof-mounted machine gun) to the cab of the 520. The 3535 cab is mounted on a flat car with a rotating searchlight. Idea ... use the 3535 as a follow-on car to the 520 and put the sound card inside the mostly-empty 3535 cab body shell -- the result: a sort-of-matched pair. The 3535 already has pick-up rollers, so I could tap into that circuit as the source of track power for the sound card.
Just thinking out loud ... Comments welcome.
Mike M.
mottlerm@gmail.com
