Oh, the irony: probably the most ‘musical’ of modern whistles were the ones applied to Cotton Belt 4-8-4s, proudly built ‘at home’ to keep their people at work. As a crowning touch for that pride the whistles were built and tuned by organ builders.
You would never know this from 819, unfortunately, which now has one of the most godawful cacaphony generators out there, far worse than anything KCS or Berkshire Partners dreamed up with diesel horns to scare the unwary. This came about, apparently, entirely by butchery: worse yet no one apparently knows the original dimensions or fabrication details so fixing the thing won’t be easy.
My personal favorite is the whistle put on Kiefer’s great swan song the A-2-A Berkshire. I do not know how this might have technically differed from other contemporary “NYC” whistle practice but the chord was beautiful and the quilling could be a thing of beauty.
There was musical knowledge and craftsmanship in the arrangement on the early Lackawanna Poconos, too… but it was tuned air horns, not a whistle, and as expected it sounds more like an Eldorado than a locomotive.
Frankly I wouldn’t give you a nickel for any hooter or steamboat whistle, evocative in a Tallulah sort of way though the latter may be, when a good chime whistle could have been provided instead. The chime will arrest attention from farther away, too.
Something that I don’t think was ever worked out was blowing whistles on higher boiler pressure. The Nathan long-bells in particular were dismal on superheated steam or high pressure, and while there were some things you were supposed to be able to do with them to fix the issues, I don’t think I ever heard an example that demonstrated one that work
I erred in omissions: “Talkies” did not depend solely on AT&T and its subdiaries. RCA made important contributions, including the perfecting of optical the sound tracks at the sides of 35mm film. They also developed a full line of theater sound amplification equipment, competing with the Western Electruc equipment tha5 later was manufactures and marketed by Altec Lansing, with James B. Lansing then starting a third competitior. And Professor Vern Knudson’s pioneering work on acoustically treating “sound stages” certainly was necessary for intelligible dialogue.
I do not really like them either, have a friend who helped restore some of those engines and he said the “elephant ears” are hard to keep clean. I like the classic lines of #4960 and #1522.
Elephant Ears are ugly and don’t belong on American locomotives. Same with streamlining. The only streamlined locos I could tolerate were the GS4 in Daylight colors.
The Elesco heaters and all the pipiing are works of mechanical art.
Then your winner of the Rolling Mud Fence Award must be those Boston and Maine Limas that added small smoke deflectors alongside the Coffin feedwater heaters!
Gosh, this has become an eclectic thread branching into music and German fiction!
As far as smoke deflectors, let me make the case for Boston and Maine’s Lima Pacifics, which in their initial incarnation have a vaguely Gallic look about them, with those elephant ears, slanted front cabs, the cladding streamlining the upper works, and then the red trim and the speed lettering.
That’s likely to provoke some disapproval among some of the commenters. I’m building a model of one of them in O Scale, and those who disapprove at my railroad are invited to contemplate the implications of the even bigger kettle you see in my avatar!
Now i have always had a soft spot for these engines with Coffin heaters (with the usual little ‘frisson’ of that name evoking the somewhat Reaper-like appearance) and those neat little tabs only improve the effect.
For true homeliness you need to go over to the B&A, which had some engines with smokebox fronts that, charitably, look as though designed by someone on a bad mescaline trip.
Note that keeping the exhaust-steam exchanger entirely outside the smokebox made the arrangement too long to be ‘saved’ by putting the smokebox-door ‘face’ forward of it. Some engines with Coffins did, in fact, do that (I believe NYC, for example, had some) and look more “normal”.
In my opinion the deflectors on Niagaras are necessary; the early versions look like the Little Rascals built a locomotive by laying a water heater on a wagon. The same can be said for the P&LE A-2-As (the initial design from 1946 shows them).
It really depends on the proportions of the locomotive if I like the addition or not. My aesthetic senses of steam locomotives are tied quite closely to German and South African locomotives so I do quite like the look of large elephant ear blinkers on certain locomotives, it usually adds to their formidable appearance.
It’s weird but I think most American locomotives actually don’t look much better with blinkers. The NYC L4s definitely have a more complete appearance with them, but I’d have to think of some other examples.
The money came from Holywood up to agout 1960. The work, however, was done at Bell Labs, AT&T in genral, and its manufacturing arm, Western Electric. Exponential horn drivers, compression drivers, large bass horn enclosures with 15 and 18-inch “woofers,” all these came from AT&T and its subsidiaries. After 1960, with its development of the transistor, the switch to digital sound was actually started in France as early as 1938 with “Pulse-code Modulation” as an alternative to Amplitude Modulation and Frequency Modulation. In 1955, Bell Labs began working on digital audio to increase capacity of radio and wire links. Frequency modulation already increased the capacity of a single link to well over a hundred messages, but ditital could raise it to ten thousand.
In 1960 Bell Labs developed a prototype frequency shifter for feedback control of public address systems. The prototype was analogue, using frequency modulation, but the commercial versions that followed were digital. (See my entry on the Manfred Shroeder Frequency Shifter and the chance meeting in the PRR Cincinnati Limited eastbound at Horseshoe Curve at www.proaudioencyclopedia.com.) Then Lexicon and Industrial Research Products both introduced competitive audio delay units to match amplified with live sound in sound reinfrcement systems in 1971, first applied in Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theater and Manhattan’s St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue (the latter landmark sound system still in operation with its KLH 6.5 pew-back loudspeakers after 49 years). Pretty sure royalties to AT&T were involved. Then came CDs, with Philips and Deutsche Grammerphone taking the lead in using digital technology and applying it to what is essentially a micro version of the original Edison hill-and-dale mechanical recording and playback, but with optical playback for zero we
I’m new in this forum, I am interested in steam locomotives from the aesthetic aspects and the vivid atmosphere they can create. A lot different from the diesel or electric locomotives that are just simply utilitarian tools to transport trains.
Yes, I think smoke deflectors are quite suited to complete a road running loco and give it some aspects of speed and dynamics.
Even the big American steam locomotives seen from a viewpoint sideways behind have a front end that lacks the forward look, the boiler is set back against the lower part and cylinders. With the last models when the large smoke deflectors were put on, the ‘elephant ears’, this was corrected and these locos look much better from this viewpoint.
On European steam locos with their smaller boilers or more narrow diameter barrels, this situation is even sharper and they do need smoke deflectors.
A special form of these sheets are the German ones that are mounted directly to the boiler sides and do not have the down reaching part. They were used on all DB and DR designs of locos since the 1950s and make an integral part of the boiler front end.
In my view, they look more speed emphasizing and dynamic than the older types of ‘elephant ears’. the second have just a vertical front profile, the former leave the front of the locomotive more open and with several visual aspects: cylinders, frames, smokebox front are more visible and play a part in the arrangement of shaping the external character.
As you can see on this photo of DB 012 054 from BW Rheine, seen in Münster in Summer 1973, southern end of the line for steam at that time.
(there should be a photo of 012 054. I have tried to put it up but I can’t.
I noticed that several people say they don’t like smoke wings - but then again with engine classes that had them from the beginning, the same people say the engine looks good with them.
That sounds like they largely appreciate all engines the way they were built in the beginning and in no improved form: those without smoke wings are better without and those with smoke wings are better
Quote: “Gosh, this has become an eclectic thread branching into music and German fiction!”
Ok, you talk about music that evokes scenes of railroading to you. Well, let’s take it one notch further: I’m talking of music that is like it comes from railroading - and what is the very core of railroading, the very center, where the essence of railroading focusses?
Right: the locomotive -
the steam locomotive, that is!
Many an Old Timer has told of the uncanny bond between the engine and him, that he felt what she was doing, if she was fine or desperately fighting to get the job done, how she reacted to what he gave her, it was like he could talk to her when she lost her temper in a wild spin, keep her calm and concentrated when the going got tough. And at a certain point of time, it was not only him talking to her but he would swear she talked to him - they had become a team working together on their time on the road, over the day, through the night - as the schedules asked it.
Now, I have a scene here of a driver and a 44 class three-cylinder Decapod: He had somehow managed to have that same 44 all the time, and finally, no one else had her - they had become a sworn-in team. This partly did happen, it was called planlok system, consisting of two or three crews for an engine, mostly though. Let’s pass this detail and assume that guy had this one 44 just for him every day. They got the trains moving like it couldn’t be any smoother, he got her to assault the incline, go through the curves, pass the small stations like it was nothing and it always was her and no other.
Then, one day he disappeared, leaving her idle at first. He had gone for further education to drive diesel. She had to feel other hands at the throttle, hands that didn’t feel anything, didn’t care, while she only yearned of that one hand - his! But he was gone.
Then finally, much later, he came back, wanted back his seat - but she had chang
There is a separate thread for warbirds vs trains (you’re welcome).
Apparently some of the North American smoke deflector designs didn’t work out as intended, resulting in their removal. I’ve read of at least one case where crews believed that a streamlined casing which was supposed to deflect smoke actually resulted in MORE of it ending up in their faces.
It wasn’t just the aging steam power that ended up forlorn and filthy, as many North American railroads slipped closer and closer to bankruptcy from the 1950s onward those shiny new diesels saw the washrack less and less often.
The white staining on the front truck is traction sand:
Ok, I see by your participant’s name you might feel differently - but my blood runs cold in view of a beaten diesel, sorry, man.
Yes, they slipped into bankruptcy - lots could be said about that, let’s leave it at that!
Smoke deflectors didn’t always work out right: well, they should have made a few simple wind tunnel tests - thats all.
In the 1990s the Polish thought even the bending of the ‘Witte’ smoke wings was a waste of effort and put on these ugly flat sheet plates - and that on a 52 (then Ty-2 / 42) with a semi-cylindrical tender water tank! Disgusting!
But then again they had friendly steam crews - they let me drive that engine with the ugly smoke wings (Ty-2.87 as I remember), and the driver even let me test the short cut-offs: I went down to 10%, then he noted that the engine had virtually quieted out, no exhaust beat any longer, it just came out smoothly without a sound - yet the fire was good and running was absolutely as good as on the general ‘smallest’ 25 - 30 % - yet he ‘corrected’ that quickly. I also drove the heftier ‘bad brother of the 52’, the 42 (then Ty-3 / 43) and the Ol-49 - also down to 15 %, the driver chatted with the fireman, didn’t care as long as we were proceeding on time, which we did. The brakes could be finely adjusted and I braked on spot with a minimum of modulating brake pressure … Those were happy days 1990 / 91 / 92 - even though my hair really suffered …
'Dude, those pictures you linked immediately reminded me of a line Walter Lord wrote, so powerful it’s stuck with me to this day. About the end of an era:
“The railroads sagged into decrepitude like a Bowery bum.”