During the turn of the last century, an artist by the name of Edward H Mitchell, of San Fransico, California, drew several postcards depicting oversized, primarily fruits on rail cars.
Today, the owner of this car, Catherine Yronwode, has collected many of the postcards and also created a train based upon those postcards.
my challenge was to install a phoenix sound card, into one of the said cars, after some thinking about it, and designing how to install the card. I feel, that I successfully met that challenge.
here’s a brief video of the completed car
The magic was how to hide the electronics, and make them work.
the sound card is run off of a 9-volt battery, and it’s kept alive battery. I choose to use both batteries primarily for reliability. then installed an on/off switch as well as a volume control.
the grapes are glued to a false bottom, that is secured in place via double-sided foam tape, leaving a pocket for the 9-volt battery, that’s covered by the grapes. The Keepalive battery sits on a shelf, just above the sound card and offers extra support for the false bottom.
here’s what the inside looks like without the grapes.
the end results are that it gives the illusion of the car being filed with grapes