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I have a couple old 80s Rail sounds boxcars which I guess were state of the art then but the only sound they came close to emulating was a Civil War woodburner.  Chuff rate of 1.  I got a newer one with much better sound but the chuff rate is about 1-1/3.  Any way to increase the chuff rate without tearing then apart?

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The chuff rate is generated by the wheel and rotating magnet. In theory adding different numbers of poles to that rotating magnet would change the chuff rate.

I'm not sure if different wheel sets had different numbers of magnetic poles (example a simple axle and wheelset change). I know that more modern ones have much smaller diameter magnet hub than the older original that you probably have on that older car.

FWIW, I do understand the desire as early on, I too wanted to use the railsounds boxcars to add sounds to trains that did not have them. I also have gotten some of the railsounds tenders for conventional engines.

I think possibly at least one of your railsounds boxcars is this https://www.lionelsupport.com/...am-RailSounds-Boxcar

6-19886

That little cylinder or hub on the axle is the magnet that triggers the chuff sound with rotation of the wheel

This tiny sensor at the tip of this circuit board is a Hall effect sensor that detects the specific magnetic poles of that rotating magnet ring on the axle.

@Bob posted:

Back in the day (late 80's) when these came out, there was a way to remove one solder connection on the circuit board to double the chuff rate.  I know I did that to a Rock Island steam sound boxcar that I had.

Edited corrections:

A little searching, I found that info on that modification. Only applies to a specific Railsounds 1.0

That said, I think your car 6-16649 is maybe also an early Railsounds 1.0 and thus the same info may apply?

Thanks to @JohnActon

https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...1#158111058791489101

Last edited by Vernon Barry

A little searching, I found that info on that modification. Only applies to a specific Railsounds 1.0  that I mentioned earlier

https://www.lionelsupport.com/...am-RailSounds-Boxcar

6-19886

That said, I think your car 6-16649 is maybe also an early Railsounds 1.0 and thus the same info may apply?

The 6-19886 car you reference is a RailSounds 3.0 model from 1997, here's the parts list from that page.

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The 6-19886 car you reference is a RailSounds 3.0 model from 1997, here's the parts list from that page.

Yes, I got a little confused trying to grab information from multiple sources.

The car referenced in the modification topic was:

Lionel 6-16631 Rock Island Steam Railsounds Boxcar

The car mentioned in this topic is:

Lionel 6-16649 REA RAILWAY EXPRESS STEAM RAILSOUNDS BOXCAR

Both appear to be Railsounds 1.0

Last edited by Vernon Barry

Doing this from memory, but I think this is right.

For the RailSounds 1 cars, the axle with magnet assembly has two magnetic sections. From the factory, the RailSounds 1 boards ignore every other magnetic activation. The "fix" that Vernon posted above tells the board to indeed chuff with every magnetic activation instead of every other one.

On the RailSounds 2 through RailSounds 4 cars, the axle with magnet assembly has one magnetic section. (This is roughly equivalent to two chuffs per revolution of a steam loco's drivers.) The axle magnet is larger, and looks the same as the one used with RailSounds 1, except the number of magnetic sections differs.

Where things really get weird is on RailSounds 4 cars and later. Lionel's Chinese manufacturer switched to a physically smaller magnet as shown above with two magnetic sections. The problem is that they kept the same part number for reasons unknown. FYI -- due to the difference in size as well the number of magnetic sections, they are NOT compatible with each other.

TRW

@PaperTRW posted:

Doing this from memory, but I think this is right.

For the RailSounds 1 cars, the axle with magnet assembly has two magnetic sections. From the factory, the RailSounds 1 boards ignore every other magnetic activation. The "fix" that Vernon posted above tells the board to indeed chuff with every magnetic activation instead of every other one.

On the RailSounds 2 through RailSounds 4 cars, the axle with magnet assembly has one magnetic section. (This is roughly equivalent to two chuffs per revolution of a steam loco's drivers.) The axle magnet is larger, and looks the same as the one used with RailSounds 1, except the number of magnetic sections differs.

Where things really get weird is on RailSounds 4 cars and later. Lionel's Chinese manufacturer switched to a physically smaller magnet as shown above with two magnetic sections. The problem is that they kept the same part number for reasons unknown. FYI -- due to the difference in size as well the number of magnetic sections, they are NOT compatible with each other.

TRW

Would those smaller magnet wheels work if you shimmed the sensor closer?  I would rather have 2 chuffs per rev I think.

Yep.  That's exactly what I got.  I have two cars.  I replaced the shell of one with a homemade civil war era box car shell and use it with my Dry Gulch "General."  The tender was "V&T (Virginia Truckee)." I just changed the passenger cars to Virginia and Tennessee.  I just wish there was a way to speed up the newer Lionel Trainsounds car.

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