I ordred an RMT Beep, looking forward to it. I would like to add a diesel horn sound. I know that Electricrr.com has the sound commander, but that's a horn and a bunch of other sounds. I may go with that, but I am just looking for a nice diesel horn sound. At present I plan to use a CW-80 and press the horn button to activate it. No fancy TMCC yet.

Any ideas?

You might want to consider pulling a Lionel boxcar with diesel railsounds behind it.

I don't own a Beep(yet) but the only problem might be it's small size--would it be dwarfed by the boxcar?

I have had very good luck with the Electric RR, sound boards. They make one for the Beep with a small speaker that fits under the roof. For the money I think you would be happy with it.

http://electricrr.com/

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You might want to consider pulling a Lionel boxcar with diesel railsounds behind it.

That's what I do (and have been doing for some years). Works fine. And there's no problem with size match-up with traditional-size cars like the diesel RailSounds cars.

With all the HO units with smoke and sound, I would think we in O could get something to fit.

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Lionel boxcar with diesel railsounds

Can someone explain to me how to use the Lionel.com "product finder" to search for "boxcar AND railsounds" ?

To me it seems that their search engine will only find sub-strings of the words in their product Title (and you have to guess correctly how they titled it).
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Lionel's product finder could use some serious upgrading.
They should have filters, so you could select engines, then click or unclick boxes for Steam, Diesel, Railsounds, Trainsounds, Smoke.

Back to my horn question: couldn't I just drop in an old Lionel diesel horn? How did they work? Did they have to be wired to a circuit board?

try a model rectifier corp. A.C. Diesel Sounder, part #0001815.
it has syncronized diesel sounds and a horn and bell that can be activated by your powerpack's horn and bell button. there's also an optional radio remote controller that lets you access additional loco sounds, plus do some limited programming of the sound module #0001824

You've been given some pretty good advice in regards to your options, but one part of your original post stood out:

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At present I plan to use a CW-80 and press the horn button to activate it. No fancy TMCC yet.

You say no TMCC yet, so it sounds to me that TMCC is on the horizon for you. If that's the case, then I suggest you approach any engine upgrades or purchases as "future proof" as possible. In other words, if you are eventually are going to go to command control in the future, then it only makes sense to invest in the core components now that upgrades your existing conventional trains to command and/or start buying command equipped engines. That way, you don't have to re-invest time & money again down the road to either upgrade those engines or possibly replace them with command-equipped.

Just a thought.

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couldn't I just drop in an old Lionel diesel horn?

I doubt that you could get that to fit.

I don't think there is even room for the "horn" itself, let alone the solenoid. And where would you put the D-cell battery?
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Just a thought.

Good thinking John.

Rail Reading: thanks, I hadn't thought about that. Didn't know they all needed a battery. Lots of learning for me.