Sound Design

Sound Design

   The Lone Wolf and Santa Fe Railroad uses City Sounds Series Sound Effect tapes and CD's. There are several different CD's which are each made for use as background sounds for different locations. There is the city, the harbor, the farm, etc. With these sounds effects the railroad sounds alive. It's just one more thing I can add to make the railroad better.
    The layout fills an entire room (actually a finished garage). Stepping into the room is like walking into a miniature world. Along with the eye level scenery, mountains that tower over you, sky-blue walls and ceiling, and custom lighting system, is the sound system. Without the sound, it would be like watching a silent movie. We put so much work into the visual aspect of our hobby, why not do something for our other senses?
    I place sound in a specific scene and play it at a low volume where you can only hear it when close by. When you walk along the line with your train, you just hear the sound that goes with the scenery that you see. The cheapest way that I have found to do this is by using small boom boxes. I look for ones with the detachable speakers. I have one section of shelving built into the bench work which holds several boom boxes. Speaker wires run under the bench work to small speakers which are hidden in the scenery. Usually they are hidden as deep into the scenery as possible, behind the last building or rock formation. Since the CD's are in stereo, I place the two speakers a few feet apart to get the full effect.
    The table below shows which effects are used in which area going west to east.
Open Track Plan in new window.

Location	CD Used Day	Night	Comments
West Side	City	City at Night	Change to Night and lower lights
North End	City	City at Night	Plays same feed as West Side
Foothills	None	Haunted House	A house decorated for Halloween
Lone Wolf Canyon	Wilderness	Crickets	Leave the city behind enter nature
Cattle Ranch	Farm Sounds	Crickets	Moo
Wolf Mountain	Thunderstorm	Thunderstorm	Thunder and lightning
High Desert	Wind	None	It's windy up there