MP3/sound module question

[Charlie B]

Hello Blue.
All of you real tech folks should be able to answer this for me.
I'm intrigued with the dimensions of these MP3 players, <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.shop4tech.com/item8627.html">http://www.shop4tech.com/item8627.html</a><!-- m --> and I was wondering what would be involved for using them for sound equipping certain types of railroad cars as in stock cars and mechanical refers, maybe even a few with wheel noise and clickety clacks.
Would there be enough strength to drive a speaker alone or do you think an amplifier would be in order. I don't want anything overwhelming, just some inexpensive sound.
Thoughts anyone?
Charlie

[rrinker]

Probably need an amp since it's designed to work with earbuds. I doubt you'd hear it otherwise unless you put your ear right up to the car - of course for something like a mechanical reefer you wouldn;t hear it unless you were really close, the noise of the train would overwhelm it in the real world.

Someone was makign a sound project for a Digitrax Soundbug that would be a mechanical reefer soundincluding staryp and shutdown of the generator, with a continuous loop once the sound started. That sort of thing would be ideal, because you could actually turn the sounds on and off without having to open the car. There are also random timers in the sound decoder, usually used for playing air letoffs and so forth, these could be used to randomly trigger cattle sounds for a cattle car.

--Randy