The next best thing to being able to watch a train in real life is to capture it on film or, even better, on tape. I'm certainly not alone among railfans in enjoying engine and horn sounds, and to let other people hear them without waiting for such a train to come is the main reason for uploading over 110 of these recordings. The first ones were made in May 2000.
A few older (before August 2000) recordings
are at 11025 Hz resulting in less clear sound, and a very few, all from
before June 2000, are lower-quality sound without good bass tones.
The changes are from recording evolutions early on; the quality and volume
of any after August 2000 is consistent. A different tape recorder
was used for the European trains.
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- By Railroad -
St. Lawrence &
Atlantic
SLR
GP11s (6 recordings)
Leased
LLPX GP38-2s (19 recordings)
Leased
SLR/GATX GP40s (3000-3003) (10 recordings)
Leased
SLR/GNWR GP40s (3004, 3200-series) (21 recordings)
Leased
SLR GP40Xs (4 recordings)
SLR
GP40M-3/RM-1 slug sets (13 recordings)
SLR
M420Ws (19 recordings)
Horn Concerts (7 recordings) (taken from above sections)
Acadian Railway
Acadian
Locomotives (4 recordings)
Canadian National
CN
Locomotives (3 recordings)
Montreal, Maine
& Atlantic/Iron Roads
CDAC
Locomotives (1 recording)
MMA
Locomotives (9 recordings)
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Samples--By Sound -
Locoomotive
Air Horn Guide
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- By Country -
France
SNCF
Trains (17 recordings)
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I started recording trains with a Radiola N2234 tape recorder dating from about 25 years ago. Despite the fact that the microphone is a small built-in condenser mic, the recording quality is spectacular and is limited only by the type of speakers used to play the sound.
On a summer 2002 trip to Europe, I bought a Sony Cassette-corder TCM-939 to record the trains there. While at first the sound seemed adequate, it was in attempting to record a run-8 North American freight upon returning that the older recorder's superiority became apparent. The Radiola recorder is currently still used for all recordings.
A different tape/CD
player plugged in directly to the microphone jack is used to transfer the
recordings.to the computer.
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