Tomy Trains sound station - The history, the purchase, the fix.

Hi all, back from semi-dormancy again, with another rather long, but [hopefully] interesting post!


So I've been off Plarail for a long time due to various reasons, but lately the idea of making/finishing some customs I had been working on sprang to mind, and I got to work on those.

While trawling eBay for some parts I needed though, I came across one of these:



The Tomy Trains 1318 Talking Station...



which is itself a re-colour and rebadge of the Plarail Talking Station, seen in the 1987 Plarail catalogue. Interestingly, I have a suspicion that the export version may have released simultaneously with the Japanese version in 1987, in part based on a small detail on part of the station, but i'll come back to that.





Now I admit, I had been curious about these for a long time, but often the ones I'd see on eBay would often be sold with the caveat of 'the sounds no longer work', and I was too afraid to take the plunge at the prices offered to try and fix it.

This one was more in the £5 range, and considering how nice a condition it was in, I thought it was worth a punt. Plus, as described, it worked perfectly... 30 years ago.

Now, because I hadn't been paying attention I only found out the 30 years ago part after it had arrived to me, and I made the stunning discovery that the sound no longer worked 

The difference now was, I had a suspicion about what I was working with, and a very real suspicion that I could actually fix this and make it work again.

And so, the teardown began.




So, this is the mechanical brain that makes the 6 sounds for this station. And yes, mechanical.

So, as in the pictures before, there are 6 buttons, which locate with the 6 actuators on the sound box itself. For the 'Start' and 'Stop' buttons, there was a further mechanical linkage added to operate the typical Tomy stop-ramp.

What gave away the secret to this sound box for me, was the seller's description that there was a 'speed control' inside the battery compartment, which indeed there is, a very simple rheostat that is wired between the batteries and the sound box.



This speed control effectively told me what I was going to be dealing with - A [sort of] dedicated Plarail gramophone!

So, to avoid significant amounts of unnessecary explaining about the basic principles of the sound-box, I'm going to leave a link here to an excellent video by Techmoan on YouTube where he explores the use of interchangable mini-vinyl discs in an Action Man toy, using a mechanism that is somewhat simpler, as it only has one button.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1L4tCiY4aI&t=59s

Indeed, the sound box seen in the station shares it's lineage with these toy soundboxes used in dolls and the like, as it's made by Ozen of Japan, a company best known for the sound boxes in dolls and novelties, as I discovered. Since this design is so unique for the station however, I suspect this was a custom unit made by Ozen in co-operation with Tomy.

The one pictured below [salmon-pink] appears to be the most common, and somewhat simpler design, in which you can swap the discs with relative ease.




So, onto how this soundbox works:




I don't believe I need to explain how a gramophone works, but this one is particularly interesting as it uses the most traditional method of amplification [the 'Edison' method as I call it] dating back to the original Phonographs of the 1870's, wherein the vibrations of the stylus are directly transmitted onto the speaker cone, which is spring-loaded to provide the nessecary stylus pressure for sound reproduction.


As such, Hi-Fi this ain't. It has a nice clear tone, but can sound somewhat harsh and has a fair degree of surface noise. Due to the playback method required, it can be safely assumed the discs were mastered quite 'hot' with high audio levels to ensure they could be heard on the basic mechanism, and that may explain the occasional harshness. 


The most fascinating bit is how they mechanically achieved individual track selections off this disc using the buttons, but as I got to examine the disc, I was able to work out how. The following diagrams are based on what I saw, and a fair amount of educated guesswork based on how the mechanism appeared to operate.



Firstly, to understand how they did it, we need to examine the disc. It is not like a normal vinyl with a single spiral groove, but actually contains 6 individual grooves for each track, each with it's own run-in groove; All however meet in the centre of the disc at the run-off point.

The diagram [showing only 3 different colour 'tracks' for clarity] gives you an idea how this works. To play a specific track, one must line up and place the stylus on a specific groove corresponding to that track. Once the track has played, the arm will move to the middle, until the next track is selected, and the process repeats.

Therefore, the 6 actuators on the box perform several actions when pressed; They rotate the disc to the correct track position in relation to the stylus, and also push the stylus/speaker assembly down, where it locks into place as the track plays. The stylus arm, which normally remains in the centre of the disc when not in use, springs back to the beginning of the disc, and this releases a reed switch [circled], which closes and powers up the turntable motor, beginning playback.





When the disc ends, the reed switch is pushed open by the stylus arm, stopping the turntable, and so the entire system shuts off, resetting on the next press.

Now, admittedly this system is far from flawless. On occasion, you will get the wrong message played, because the actuators did not move the disc far enough, or because the disc did not stop in the regular stop position. This issue seems to be more prevalent when the disc is played at slower speeds, which leads me to believe the issue does have some relation to the stopping position of the disc, and slower speeds make it more likely to stop in the wrong place. 

The fix I had to perform on my one related to the aforementioned reed-switch that controls the power to the turntable. Aside from the fact it was very heavily corroded, which can be seen in the pictures [not sure why, as it was not in contact with anything corrosive, nor was there any battery leakage], it had become bent out of position by being in the 'Off' [bent backwards] position for probably the last 30 years. 

Initially, I got it running, but it would either run intermittently, or too slowly, which I eventually traced back to the reed switch not allowing enough power to the motor.

As such, after a lot of persistence and contact cleaner, I eventually realised it needed to be bent back slightly to give it a nice strong connection, and to my utter relief, after that, the entire mechanism began working absolutely fine, and I was able to reassemble the station, which will now take pride of place somewhere in my layout.

Now, for a bit of minor curiosity. I strongly suspect there is actually a 'Side 2/B-side' to the disc, which may contain other announcements, possibly in another language, so they did not have to make individual discs for each market. This was not an uncommon thing with doll records either, as anecdotally there are records of there being both laughing sounds [from novelty 'laughing bags'] and crying sounds [from baby dolls] being found on the unlabelled B-side of discs found in each product.

However, the way the disc is attached in this mechanism is by a very firm set of plastic clips, and I am rather afraid of breaking them, which would render the entire unit unusable, and that is obviously not something I want to do, given that sourcing a working replacement or parts would be nearly impossible, and to avoid undoing any of the work I already put in to make it work properly.

All the same, I think it's fascinating how much mechanical ingenuity went into this, and how, thanks to this station, we technically have an official Plarail gramophone/phonograph. Shame it can't play regular 45's or 33's though, as believe me, a Plarail station capable of blasting some classic tunes on demand would be most excellent 


Finally, to return to what I mentioned earlier about that 1987 date - 1987 was the year that the station appeared in the Plarail catalogue in Japan, and Tomy Trains was debuted in around 1987 also.

However, there is a more subtle nod to the era this was released in, which might be easily missed. Part of this station's features are two sets of 'roller' displays, one acting as a 'clock', the other a destination board. 

The destinations are all European capitals, including: 

London [England] 



Paris [France] 



Oslo [Norway] 



Rome [Italy] 



Brussels [Belgium]



and Bonn [Germany]... 



Bonn? Why not Berlin?

So, some of you probably know where this is headed, but for those unaware, the Cold War was in it's final years at the end of the 1980's, with more and more of the former Soviet bloc seeking independence from Communist control. Moreover, as a result of the outcome of World War 2, Germany had been divided into 2 seperate states, West Germany, and Soviet East Germany. The former German capital Berlin [an enclave surrounded by East Germany] was split into several zones of occupation.

Now I think it goes without saying that Tomy Trains or Plarail most certainly weren't avaliable in East Germany circa 1987 when this station was on sale, but would have been in West Germany, and West Germany's capital up to 1990 was [drumroll], the city of Bonn. In that regard, it makes perfect sense why the destination blind, especially for a product that was to be sold in West Germany among other places would reflect their then-current capital city. 

Incidentally, although Berlin was officially reinstated as the capital of Germany in 1990 during the reunification process, Bonn remains a key location for many branches of the German government, and is considered as almost a second capital city in the modern day due to this. In a funny way therefore, the station is still sort of correct to list Bonn as a capital, even if the context has changed somewhat  

[Super]

Interesting mechanics and an excellent find P-Man

Excellent work, and well written. I have two of these and the Japanese one (all working) so I never needed to examine the mechanism in such detail.  I do seem to recall another post on here a few years ago now that looked at the innards, though in somewhat less depth, and which also had a link to a Youtube video with some of this information in it. However it hardly seems worth the effort to go looking for it now.

Fantastic!
Would you be able to record the station announcements? I think I’ve only heard one or two of them before

Absolutely   

I do actually have a video of the 'before' and 'after' of my fix work, so I guess I'll stick that on here 

I may also make an MP3 of the announcements if anyone wanted to use them for anything as well.

Honestly the idea of flipping the disc appeals to me as well, if only to satisfy my personal curiosity as to any other announcements,  so I might see if I can free the disc safely 👍

July 1987 - 1988



J-27 1988 - 1995. In J-31 1996 - 1998 the mini-disk was replaced by an circuit board, also the battery compartment moved to inside the station building, and from one to two AA batteries.

Very interesting, can't say I'm too surprised that they swapped for a circuit board based system in the 1990's as it was probably cheaper by then to use that than making the disc based mechanisms, which probably also rings true for most toys using similar systems as well (I was a child in the early 2000's and any sound emitting toys I had used microchip/IC based systems by then).

[Super]

Thank you Dr Chris ☺️👍

Fantastic!
Would you be able to record the station announcements? I think I’ve only heard one or two of them before

So for whatever reason I can't attach a sound file directly, but I can attach a Google Drive link to a file playing all 6 announcements, so here you all go

Unfortunately the sound quality isn't the best, because of course taking a direct feed from this thing isn't gonna happen, and it was never a partcularly hi-fi system to begin with, so there's that to contend with also.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kO6aVAM...sp=sharing

But, there was an added complication...

So, to try and answer the question of if there indeed was a B-side to the sound record, I reopened the thing, and looked at the disc very carefully, and after a while, came to the conclusion there is no way for there to be anything on the B-side, as there's no run-in grooves on the other side. The fact it's a transparent disc means you should see any grooves on the other side if you look at it from a certain angle, and I can't see any.

However, when reassembling it, the drive belt snapped as I tried to re-fit it to the motor spindle  



I panicked initially, but after finding a massive bag of office rubber bands, and one that happened to be a close enough fit in terms of diameter and cross-section, I was fortunately able to repair the unit.   


I have discovered at least a few quirks to the unit through using it since the original post.

Firstly, the issue with the wrong announcement playing sometimes is basically just inevitable, due to the nature of the mechanism - It's mostly fine, and I suppose that was good enough for Tomy and the purposes of a toy.

That said, it appears to work best if you press the announcement button, then wait until the audio stops [i.e, the turntable stops] before pressing for another announcement, as it seems pressing the button before that while the disc is spinning causes the wrong track to be lined up, presumably because the mechanism is built on the basis that the stylus should be starting from the dead centre, not from before.

As I mentioned before as well, it also appears that the speed does play a fairly integral role in the consistent operation of the unit, as when the speed control is set to slow, it makes mistakes more often. 

My theory is that this is because at a slower speed, the disc is unable to rotate into the correct position before the motor cuts out, therefore misaligning the disc for the next use. When set to medium or faster speeds, it seems to be more reliable.

Finally, now I'm aware that the J-31 version with an IC/microchip based system exists [thanks chrisjo!], I can surmise that Tomy probably swapped to the IC system eventually due to it's percieved higher reliability and consistency, eliminating the issue of record alignment altogether, although the fact the record-based system lasted right up to 1996 is impressive to say the least. 

Personally, however, I can't help but find the record-based system to be far more interesting overall, considering that it was really a fairly old-fashioned way of producing sound in a toy by the time this station released, and how the mechanism itself is basically using an Edison derived design from the 1890's to function. 

That, and the slightly wonky/crunchy analogue feel of the announcements just really has a charm of it's own that no modern electronic design will ever have, and for that, I think this station's going to be hard to beat

[Super]

Glad you had a successful repair P-Man 👍