"The first was MTH in O scale, with their QSI system," said Dave Peters. "That was in the late ‘90s when the QSI sound came out. That was the first that actually sounded like a real train."
"With QSI sound, you had Atlas, Broadway Limited, Intermountain and Proto 2000 locomotives," said Dave. Indeed, these four companies spread sound far and wide in the very popular HO-scale.
"Athearn was using MRC, which was not a very good quality at that time. Now Athearn has changed to Tsunami by Soundtraxx, and I think that is the most realistic sound out there. Bachmann also uses Tsunami."
While several do-it-yourself sound products existed, it took a few easily accessible sound-equipped locomotives to capture interest the community of modelers and create a big market for model sound.
This LokSound Micro 3.5 from ESU is typical of do-it-yourself sound decoders that made sound an option in model railroading. While N-scale still relies on the more modeler-friendly drop-in decoders from MRC, it is locomotives with factory-installed sound that truly popularize model train sound."In HO, the Broadway Limited (BLI) N&W A-class and the J-class Hudsons were the first to come out with sound, and they sold well," said Dave. "The BLI SW-7 was definitely a good seller because of the diesel sounds."
"It seems after that the groups kinda set their patterns, who was going to be with sound and without sound," Dave observed.
John Sipple also started out with BLI's pioneering Hudson-type steam locomotive.
"I was equipped with a Digitrax Zephyr and a BLI Hudson," John says of his debut into DCC and sound. "So I got the sound, the lights, and the motion all in one thing. I was out in the garage, playing with this and thinking, 'This is it. This is it. There is a God.'"
"I had just brought a whole new dimension to model railroading," said John. "We began to realize that this was not a proprietary thing, it was catching on."
The Broadway Limited E7 was the first locomotive to hit the N-scale market with a factory-installed DCC sound decoder. It was originally released under the short-lived Precision Craft Models label, but the model above is from the later BLI re-release."The [Broadway Limtied/Precision Craft Models] E7 was the first N scale locomotive I saw with factory-supplied sound," said Frank Verrico. "The sound [volume] was so low, I could hardly hear it, so I said, we have to get ours louder."
"We started the design of the 1644 roughly in 2007. Those were good sellers, the 1645 and 1644," Frank said of his company's first entries into the N-scale sound decoder market. "It started with those two, and the e-mails started coming in: 'Can you make it for this?' 'Can we make it for this?'"
"People would send us a locomotive that’s been out of production for a while and ask if we can put a decoder in that," Frank said. "We’d build one, put it in and send it back to them free of charge, but we’d also use that to develop our prototype decoder."
Clearly, there was a market for sound in N-scale, and MRC isn't the only one to capitalize on it. Broadway Limited came back from a long release delay relating to their offshoot company, Precision Craft Models. BLI has recently released more E7 locomotives, and then other diesel engine types.
BLI's PA-1 model was released in early 2010, and for an N-scale locomotive, it could rattle the roof. Sound decoders are often hard to hear in a wide-open store. Both MRC and Broadway Limited have certainly overcome this hurdle.
"I was in the front of the store when [the PA-1] came in, and I could hear it all the way from there," said Dave.
"HO of course is the biggest segment of the market, and there’s a lot being sold, which explains why so many people are jumping into it," said John. "We’ve kinda got a wild frontier out there."
Even if it is such a tangle to know where it began, N-scale sound is growing strong.
"N is a growing market," said John. "It has a potential for growth because it can fit a lot more trains in a smaller space."
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