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Ok so iv looked all over multiple railroad fourms but haven't found anything on this topic and I thought it best to make a discussion about it.

What is the "I think I can" chugging sound?

Well according to an old video on YouTube that I can no longer find, the Williams company put a very special joke sound clip in some of their o scale locomotives,  specifically the PRR-K4 and NYC-Niagara 

And this clip would trigger randomly and it was said to be " a ghostly voice" and the man didn't know what it was and said to his adult son "my train in talking to me" and recorded it. After listening to it they found it was saying "I think I can, I think I can " in a raspy voice like the little engine that could! 

He emailed williams and they were floored to find that somehow he got it to trigger,  they later sent the man a list of transformer imput commands to trigger the effect on que! Even better if you blew the whistle one time and started the engine again,  it would say " I thought I could "

So what I'm asking is if anyone else has this effect on their williams locomotives? 

And if you have a video PLEASE POST IT!

 

 

 

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Engineer James posted:

Ok so iv looked all over multiple railroad fourms but haven't found anything on this topic and I thought it best to make a discussion about it.

What is the "I think I can" chugging sound?

Well according to an old video on YouTube that I can no longer find, the Williams company put a very special joke sound clip in some of their o scale locomotives,  specifically the PRR-K4 and NYC-Niagara 

And this clip would trigger randomly and it was said to be " a ghostly voice" and the man didn't know what it was and said to his adult son "my train in talking to me" and recorded it. After listening to it they found it was saying "I think I can, I think I can " in a raspy voice like the little engine that could! 

He emailed williams and they were floored to find that somehow he got it to trigger,  they later sent the man a list of transformer imput commands to trigger the effect on que! Even better if you blew the whistle one time and started the engine again,  it would say " I thought I could "

So what I'm asking is if anyone else has this effect on their williams locomotives? 

And if you have a video PLEASE POST IT!

 

 

 

This was a feature installed in the software of QSI OEM sound systems used by Williams.

Lou N

April Fool's? 

'Cause that " Easter Egg" (term for modern tech's hidden stuff) might actually get me to run a sound board more often

Shame on the mfgs for not at least making a low tech starter set. If anything was going to touch non-christmas train folk; I'd think this is it... could be some royalty/copywrite issues though.... and having Thomas in the lineup might be a derailer too. "But they won't let us" might be a more suitable closing sound clip.

I was able to play a video from someones reply, but only once and then it said it was copyrighted by OGR.  Then I looked through my collection of OGR The Videos and the are labeled by the four seasons and a year and via a volume and number.   I have volumes 1-4, and numbers 1-4 for each season.  Saying the talking engine is in Volume 4 Number 15 does not make sense.  Maybe you counted from Volume 1, Number 1 so I guessed 15 would be Volume 4 Number 3 AND one of the contents is "Jim Ford's Amazing Niagara"!!!!!  Now if my VCR will still work!

Thanks to all who contributed!

My VCR still worked and I played the OGR The Video (VHS tape) Volume 4, Number 3 (Spring 1997) which shows the Williams Niagara saying "I think I can ...".  It was great to see the interest.  OGR should post their old videos on YouTube!  My thanks to those who steered me to my old box of OGR videos!

O Gauge Railroading had a video series called "O Gauge Railroading The Video".  These were on VHS tape and each was about an hour long. The first was released in the Fall of 1993.  Each volume had 4 tapes and I have the first 4 volumes (maybe that is all there are).  Volume 4, Number 3 (Spring 1997) has the Williams Niagara saying "I think I can ...".  I found some on Ebay but not on any of the OGR web sites.  I am surprised that they were never put on DVD as far as I know.

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