Senco Sound Tenders

Wow. Something new errr old learned everyday.

A blast from the past Joe, pretty cool in it's day.

Cool stuff!! From the wiring instructions page: Pittsburgh, 6, Pa. East Liberty, where I was born and lived til I was 12!!

H'm!  I suppose you could digitize the 78s and hook a modern speaker to a Bluetooth receiver in the tender to approximate the effect... 

Mitch

Above:

"These tenders are fairly nice, but they don't fit well with anything. They are far too wide to look good with postwar Lionel, which is probably what they were intended to go with, and they are not detailed enough to fit well with scale models of the time. They're also very short, so only fit with small locomotives."

Oh, I don't know. This Senco tender works well behind my modified/re-lettered Williams Ten-Wheeler (a nominally scale 4-6-0). The AT&N RR was real and had similar 4-6-0's. The USRA tender that came with the Wms loco was too big. My Senco tender (eBay) came empty.

The tender has an ERR DC Commander (no cruise required with this engine's good gearing) and a frame-mounted Electrocoupler and a little added detail; I added the tool boxes partly to hide the roller pickup I mounted for better continuity.

Original trucks; the tender body is insulated from the frame for TMCC antenna mounting. Front steps, tool boxes, basic handrails added. Nice-looking, small scale-sized tender, suitable for all sorts of projects. Truck flanges are Hi-Rail compatible.

Ironically, as it is a "sound tender", I did not add Railsounds.

Guess I'll post my Senco tender as well.  It was donated to me by a forum member (thanks again @Dave Funk). I think it looks right at home behind my semi-custom 2-8-0 whatever loco that I rebuilt.

There's a whole part of the thread dedicated to the teardown and rebuild of the Senco tender here.

Here's the final product:

Those LP's are cool!  When Dave sent me the tender, he explained how it worked.  I gutted mine in favor of a PS1 board and sound, but I kept the guts in case I ever want to rebuild again as original.  Still have the original battery and oval speaker!

Very nice examples of these, those look good behind those engines. I suppose I exaggerated a bit, lol, they do fit some engines well. I was mainly referring to what was available at the same time as these tenders, mainly Lionel.

I happen to have a Senco sound tender set that is mint in the box and has all the paperwork and the elusive mixer box. I bought this from a friend in TTOS whom I did part time Ebay listing work for. He had acquired a collection of vintage 2 rail O scale. Most of it was from the 1940s and 50s. This collection had a bunch of Senco sound tenders, mostly 2 rail models but there were some 3 rail as well. There were 3-4 2 rail models that were mint in the box and a couple mint 3 rail models. There were also a bunch of 2 and 3 rail loose tenders as well. I’m guessing the collector must have bought a store’s remaining inventory back in the 40s.

This is the only time I’ve ever seen boxed examples of these. I have pdf scans of the paperwork for those who are interested.

@Johnbeere posted:

These tenders are fairly nice, but they don't fit well with anything. They are far too wide to look good with postwar Lionel, which is probably what they were intended to go with, and they are not detailed enough to fit well with scale models of the time. They're also very short, so only fit with small locomotives.

Scale modelers of the time would be used to detailing such things themselves, and, frankly, the detail level of most scale equipment was not much higher than that of the 3-rail.

   Curiously I looked up Senco tender on youtube and sure enough, someone uploaded a 4 minute recording of the lp if anyone is interested.

I agree that is an ugly lobster claw on the back of that tender. I wonder how many of us have a record player? Mine, along with the rest of my stereo, and record collection, went for a swim with Sandy😢

@Ryan Selvius posted:

I happen to have a Senco sound tender set that is mint in the box and has all the paperwork and the elusive mixer box.

I have pdf scans of the paperwork for those who are interested.

Cool! I'd be interested in seeing the paperwork - all I have is the one instruction sheet that I showed in my original post. Have you ever tried setting it all up and seeing what it sounds like? I'd be interested to hear the sound quality out of it.

I didn't realize that they also made these in 2 rail, do you still have any photos of the underside of those?

Since my original post, I've gotten ahold of a mixer box, but it's a big mess. All the screws are stripped out, it's missing wiring, and it's filthy inside. Do you think you could post photos of the insides of your mixer box so I can see how it should be?

@palallin posted:

Scale modelers of the time would be used to detailing such things themselves.

Definitely. It just seems odd to me that Senco would choose a scale width for a three rail tender in 1947. There were very few scale-sized three rail engines produced back then, so there wasn't too much to pair it with.

This is a fun historical peek. Thanks to everyone for sharing.

@Johnbeere posted:

Cool! I'd be interested in seeing the paperwork - all I have is the one instruction sheet that I showed in my original post. Have you ever tried setting it all up and seeing what it sounds like? I'd be interested to hear the sound quality out of it.

I didn't realize that they also made these in 2 rail, do you still have any photos of the underside of those?

Since my original post, I've gotten ahold of a mixer box, but it's a big mess. All the screws are stripped out, it's missing wiring, and it's filthy inside. Do you think you could post photos of the insides of your mixer box so I can see how it should be?

Definitely. It just seems odd to me that Senco would choose a scale width for a three rail tender in 1947. There were very few scale-sized three rail engines produced back then, so there wasn't too much to pair it with.

I can send you scans of the pdf’s when I get home tomorrow or on monday. One of the sheets is a product guide. I did try setting mine up with my turntable. I get a hum from the tender speaker but the sound doesn’t transmit. I’m thinking the old condenser packs are bad in either the tender or the mixer box: they are over 70 years old afterall. Recreating the circuits with modern components would probably be necessary.

The record is 45 rpm and sounds pretty good. The recordings are very similar to railrod audio records that were commonly sold in the 60s and 70s. Stationary microphone that recorded a locomotive runby or a station arrival/departure.

I did open my mixer box up to look inside. All the components are wrapped up in some type of insulating fabric. It would be a pretty invasive operation to get it out to see the whole circuit. I’m not sure yet how deep I want to probe into it yet.

I don’t have photo’s of the 2 rail models since ot was over 10 years agothat these went up for sale. I recall they look the same as the 3 rail models but no center rail slider and insulated wheel sets.

Thank you to all who have posted information about the SENCO sound tender.  After I found and purchased the tender from eBay, I found this info in the forum.  Knowing nothing of the tender prior to finding the forum, my interest has really peaked   I plan to mate my recently purchased tender with a tenderless American Flyer prewar O GA 0-6-0 switcher. 

@fast freight posted:

   Curiously I looked up Senco tender on youtube and sure enough, someone uploaded a 4 minute recording of the lp if anyone is interested.

That was pretty good. If one could get their Senco system to work, you could use any sound recording you wanted to play.

Tried searching but could not find a description of how the sound worked.  From what I could gather, the phonograph signal is mixed with 60 Hz (or DC) track voltage.  And from what I can see the tender had not much more than a speaker in terms of electrical components.  So given the technology of the period, I'm thinking the tender speaker is simply playing the 60 Hz track voltage along with the higher frequency audio from the phonograph.  And the speaker did not have sufficient low-frequency response to the 60 Hz "hum."

From the instruction sheet posted earlier, it appears tubes (vacuum) were required perhaps to amplify the weak phonograph signal to a voltage level comparable to the 60 Hz track voltage?

@Ryan Selvius posted:

I have pdf scans of the paperwork for those who are interested.

Cool, could you post them here?

@stan2004 posted:

Tried searching but could not find a description of how the sound worked.  From what I could gather, the phonograph signal is mixed with 60 Hz (or DC) track voltage.  And from what I can see the tender had not much more than a speaker in terms of electrical components.  So given the technology of the period, I'm thinking the tender speaker is simply playing the 60 Hz track voltage along with the higher frequency audio from the phonograph.  And the speaker did not have sufficient low-frequency response to the 60 Hz "hum."

American Flyer superimposed the horn or whistle sound waveform on the track voltage and passed it to a loudspeaker on the train through a crude high-pass filter that rejected the 60-hertz power-line frequency.

I'm thinking this used the same and it looks like they mention this in this picture "Condensor Pack"

Further, they then had the user connect a different condensor across block sections of track to carry the audio signal.