Help Whistle & Bell

[gwg50]

Hey Guys

 

I’m having trouble getting my whistle & bell to work with my ZW. The whistle would work on both A & D sides but the bell would not work so I bought two 610-5906-001 sound activation button. Now that I have it all hooked up the bell will work with the sound activation button but now the whistle button on the ZW will not work. What am I doing wrong. I really don’t care that much about the bell but since I bought sound activation I would like to try to get it to work. If not I will take it out and just have the whistle. Thanks Guys. Gary

[chuck]

Modern era ZW or PostWar?

[Anonymous]

Gary,

Presumably (from one of your earlier posts) you have a "postwar" ZW. 

The basic principle of operating a train with both whistle/horn and bell is to create two different signals: a low-voltage positive Direct Current (DC) and a similar negative signal. The postwar ZW will send one such signal but not the other. Furthermore, the built-in whistle controller on the old ZW was designed to operate motor-driven "air whistles" in the tender, and (in my opinion) are better NOT used to activate modern electronic sounds, although it is possible to do so.

What is required is careful attention to the polarity of the hookup wires between the transformer, sound activation button(s) and track -- that is, which wire goes to the center rail and which goes to the outside rails.

Since you already have two modern sound activation buttons, it is both possible and desirable to wire both of them together to run one train, from the "A" (power) and the "U"  (common) terminals of your ZW. With this method one button will control the whistle/horn and the other button controls the bell; and one does not need to use the whistle/horn button that is built into the ZW at all.

The instructions for doing this (and for other ways of connecting one or more Sound Activation Buttons are a little hard to find on the Lionel website, but they are there under Customer Service ----- Instruction Manuals ------> Locomotives (some -- but not all, either steam or diesel -- such as (diesel) 71-8154-250, page 9, second diagram entitled "For AC transformers lacking a horn/whistle button."

I know, I know, your ZW does have a horn/whistle button (two, actually) but pretend it doesn't and try this method. You may like it. I'd love to hear whether this works for you.

[ole1]

Hi gwg50

One word of caution.  We have a button hooked up to the ZW on club layout and it works fine except if someone hits both whistle and bell at the same time which will zap the sound unit in newer whistle tenders.

Ole

[gwg50]

I thank I fixed it now, Just bought a new ZW That should do it.