An avid follower here of model railway forums (fora?) and all things that run on rails.
At railway crossings, I will usually stop, roll down the car windows, and spend a few minutes mesmerized by the pleasant sounds of rail-joint clicks, wheel squeal, harmonic rattling, and the musical rumbling of laden freight cars. All this after the powerful growling of the lead locomotives that follow the thrill of the warning horn blasts.
I grew up in a “railway family” in the hey day of steam and well remember the hypnotic movement of complicated linkage and the wondrous smells of coal-steam-and-lubricating oils.
The thought occured to me that we modellers go to extremes to mimic in miniature the scale details of real life — painting and weathering equipment and structures. Yet, we try our best to achieve quiet running of our rolling stock—cork or similar sound deadening road beds and avoiding resonating sub-road-beds.
I admit that I am not amongst the rivet-counters, but rail roads are noisy creatures. Why do we try to stifle them in modeling?
The noise of my trains never bothers me and is expected. The acoustics of the room make a huge difference in sound levels. I moved a layout from a room that had bare walls and ceramic tile to a room with heavy carpet and drapes and the drop in the noise level was staggering.
I don’t think people realize just how much of the sound comes from the wheels on the rails. I have a section of track that runs on 1" of cement board and it is quite loud.
I think it’s because model trains don’t really make the same sounds real trains do unless you have a sound system in one of the cars or locomotives or a sound module of some sort on the layout. By themselves they make the whirr of tiny little motors and the clicking and clacking sound of the little plastic or metal wheels passing over the joints between sections of track. For some people it’s kind of annoying but it doesn’t really bother me. I find it calming actually. I’m one of those people who needs some kind of white noise in the background. Too much quiet actually bothers me.
Flange squeal is an added ‘feature’ of some sound DCC decoders and I use the option to some degree as well as brake squeal when stopping.
If you’re looking for flange squeal you need look no farther than the Iowa Scaled Engineering ‘Squealer’:
I have a motorized bascule bridge that I have four sounds wired up to. First, a ‘big ship’ whistles off to get the bridge tender’s attention then an old fashioned, loud siren goes off alarming anyone nearby that the bridge is about to lift. The next thing you hear is motor whirring and gears clanking as the bridge rises. When the bridge comes back down to rest you hear the air snubbers then the track lock engagement motors ‘clank’ into place.
There’s another outfit that sells various trackside sounds loaded into modules. At one time I had various steel mill sounds eminating from my blast furnace using a cheap, simple MP-3 player and a couple of powered computer speakers under the layout. It is still there but I haven’t fired it up in a while.
Sounds on a model railroad are like seasonings on a gourmet meal. Too much of any one is not pleasant. My sound ‘stage’ is very subdued and in order to hear any of them you really need to be close by. I have attended too many train shows where the display layouts are blasting away like a circus calliope! NO not for me. Subtle is the rule.
