Reliable, cheap idiot-proof? Lost and confused.

[Fotografics]

Please excuse me for jumping in with both feet and asking a question but...

I'm directing an amateur play in a village hall. We are talking small here. The play requires the sound effect of a train going past.

My idea is to have four speakers so that I (or rather the guy who will be "doing sound") can walk the sound of the train along. Starting with speaker 1, then 2 then 3 and then... You get the drift.

Our biggest consideration is budget. The group have no money so I'm going to have to finance this out of my own pocket. So I've become an ebay junkie. In view of this (and the fact that it is a small village hall) I'm looking at consumer gear.

My plan is to have two CD players with the sound of the train recorded on two CDs. The CD players go into amps and then on to the speakers. I think I've sussed out the amps (Denon) but the CD players are exploding my brain. There are so, so many makes, variants, models and versions that I am reduced to screaming "help!".

Bearing in mind the three main requirements in order are "Cheap, reliable, simple" what would you suggest?

 

[ImcLoud]

Why make this so complicated, my wife used to do all the play stuff for the kids, and a train would be a couple sound blocks rubbing together and a whistle, behind the black screen the person making the effects would just run from one side to the other.... If you really want to use a speaker, I would get a single mono pole speaker and have someone run across the black screen with it on a long cable.... And as for a cd player, I would get an active speaker and use an mp3 player with the sound clip down loaded to it, there are a ton of sources on the net for effects... If you do want to do it with multi speakers I would use just 2 speakers, then through an avr one on each side of the stage should give the effect...

 

[Fotografics]

It isn't complicated at all. The sound of the train has to go from the back of the hall to the front along one side of the room. Someone running with a loudspeaker would (a) be a bit obvious (b) be dangerous with a trailing cable and (c) he would not be able to run as fast as an express train.
The whole point of the effect is to get the audience to believe that a train has gone past.
We experimented with a home hifi and Tape, MP3 and direct from a laptop and the small (50w) amp was more than up to the job spl wise but neither tape nor MP3 players gave the quality of the wav file from the laptop. Since this is a "CD quality" file (ie 44.1 and 16bit) I want to keep it as high quality as poss.

So, anyone have any ideas which CD players are robust and have a long-life? Also which ones to avoid?