trainsandmusic wrote: Wow! Sounds kind of high tech and fancy shmancy. THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE TODAY, or yesterday, or something. I was way off. Kind of makes lionel's way look old fasioned. I guess Gilbert did have a hall of science.
Not to start a American Flyer vs. Lionel war, but Gilbert did have some very inovative ideas, well ahead of their time and IMHO the competion
Jim
Bob Nelson
So how do I get it to work? Do I need a special button? What exactly triggers it?
lionelsoni wrote:Joseph, I am not aware that American Flyer had anything like the Lionel superimposed-DC scheme. As I said, "all of these were very unlike the Lionel whistle technique."
The Air Chime Whistle did work off a superimposed oscillating signal of ~ 1000 cycles on the track. The signal was picked up a small speaker in the tender or "B" unit and made a whistle soound. There are volume adjustments and could be ran off ac or dc. See page 161-167 in the Complete Service Manual for American Flyer Trains. I don't have a 314 AW but someday maybe!
I don't know about the horn or whistle features in the engines, but the whistling billboard only gets momentary power, whistle works whenever power is supplied to it, from an A.C. source of about 12 to 15 volts.
Maybe Bob N. or others can help you out on the horn/whistle features in the locomotives.
Lee F.
zeke wrote: i think it was the red version...i will check....hes got some sante fe f3's i think they are called...a little rough in the paint but run smooth.... some af searchlight cars too..
i think it was the red version...i will check....hes got some sante fe f3's i think they are called...a little rough in the paint but run smooth....
some af searchlight cars too..
S is beSt!!!!!!!!
Diehard S gauger with a serious O gauge habit
Zeke
The color combo makes abig difference in the price. The one in the pic is back cab and green boom pretty common $75 for excellent; if it is red cab black boom $135 for excellent.
The early S American Flyer had a hook looking coupler called a link coupler. There were various adaptions and you can tell the year by the coupler, thin shank thick shank, no weight brass weight steel weight. To adapt them there are conversion knuckle couplers where you drive out the pin, and replace the link with knuckle and a cotter pin.
Did the crane look like this:
If so it is a 644; notice the link couplers
thats interesting....
you said anything af...well i was at the train store here in town and hes got some af for sale and used for sale. There is a crane looking like car which looks very interesting. But i noticed the couplers are differant, from my lionels. there were about 20-30 differant pieces he had in a box for cheap i was thinking of buying them but, they wont couple to my stuff...is there a way to adapt them? I really didnt look real hard. if not them i will pass on them but they looked really nice...thank
This is more to do with track for A.F. There are several companies who made track for S gauge trains with American Flyer being the most well known brand. GarGraves makes S gauge track and switches, S Helper also makes switches for S gauge track but needs adapter pins to be used with A.F. or GarGraves track, K-Line made S gauge track mainly ten inch straights and 54 inch curves and can be used with A.F. track without adapter pins.
The billboards with whistle that Bob N. mentioned need a momentary contact switch, push button, to work without the motor overheating. Some billboards also have miniture light sockets to light up the advertisement.
There are several folks who regularly post who have AF. My collection and layout are all postwar to 1966 American Flyer. In Sunday Photo fun there are a few pics today of my layout and two freshly refurbed accesories.
Love American Flyer!!!
American Flyer had three kinds of whistles:
An air whistle very similar to the Lionel whistle, but located behind a billboard instead of the tender. It was blown simply by applying voltage to its motor.
The "air chime" whistle, which was some sort of vibrator-like generator that produced an audio-frequency tone that was superimposed on the track voltage. A capacitor separated the audio from the 60 hertz and fed it to a loudspeaker at the locomotive.
An electronic vacuum-tube-generator version of the "air chime".
You can see that all of these were very unlike the Lionel whistle technique.
Not many posts on AF. Thought we should get some talk on the subject. I guess I will get the ball rolling with a question I've been meaning to ask. As A Lionel guy with a small but growing Gilbert collection, how does one get the horn to sound in a PA B unit? I have Lionel transformers. It doesn't work with the whistle button. Now do I have t purchase an mericn Flyer sound activation button or should it work with my Lionel transformer?
BTW, Anything and everything American Flyer is welcome on this post.
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