Other than the primemover turned down to about a 40% level, the diesel horn, and the occasional bell (for about 10 seconds), I never use the other sounds the onboard products provide.
My modern era has no use for a caboose, but if it did, I can’t see where I’d want to pay extra for all of those sounds I’d never use.
I don’t think I’d like ambient sounds either.
Hi riogrande5761,
It wasn’t my intent to disparage the Athearn cabooses. They are obviously well done and I believe that the prices are reflective of that quality.
You are quite right. I’m a hack. I’m perfectly happy with my repurposed Athearn BB cabooses despite the fact that they are totally bogus, the grab irons and brake wheels are too thick, and I stole the colour scheme from CP. Algoma Central was an actual railway in northern Ontario but they were eaten up by Canadian Pacific (IIRC) long before steel cabooses hit the scene. I enjoyed the project enormously, but I promise that I won’t ask to run them on your layout.[swg][(-D]
Each to his own. I do have the right to express my opinions.
Dave
Sheldon,I couldn’t agree more…Another thing I can’t stand is some one blowing the horn or whistle with every stop and change of direction. In normal switching this is not necessary… My BLI SW7 came this way… I set that CV to off.
My DCC/Sound engines has the volume turn down to a very comfortable level and IMHO it sounds much better.
I too prefer my sounds more subdued than the way they come from the factory. I have actually thought of getting one of those mooing stock cars, since I do have a small stockyard and even a tannery further down the line. Fortunately, I never ran across a deal on those stock cars.
I have several Walthers Milwaukee bay window cabeese. I took the time to illuminate one of them, and even add a rudimentary interior, which basically can’t be seen because the windows are too small. But, I never thought that a sound installation would be valuable.
By the way, I think it was here that someone mentioned that prototype cabeese were seldom illuminated while running at the end of a train. Does any know?
I used to bum rides in the late '60s and 1970s when a friend of mine worked on Penn-Central. As I recall the conductor would sometimes turn on a small overhead desk lamp if he had orders to read or papers (waybills) to sort. Even then there was usually a coffee tin or some kind of shade rigged to keep the pool of light from straying away from the desk.
Night vision was important to maintain in order to see dragging equipment, hot boxes, sticking brakes and such. If a crew member had something to do in a darkened area they would use their Star lantern and sometimes shade it with their hand or some cardstock to keep the glare out of their eyes.
Regards, Ed
I have not kept track, but I have paid an average of about 6-7 dollars (including a bargain $3 CN caboose and one Kevin sent me)
Mr.B, The only lights we used at night was the dim light above the conductors desk… We kept the caboose dark so we could see any hot boxes or sparks from a derail wheel or dragging brakes.
Another reason was to protect ourselves from flying projectiles… Nothing beats a nice backlighted silhouette for a rock or bottle tosser.
To Atlantic Central. Thanks for the line by line analysis of my post, but really, I thought it obvious I was poking a little fun at the excesses some modellers put into things.
I have seen a couple layouts where the cars on the roads moved - some sort of moving magnet under the roadway to move the vehicles. Perhaps a parade with a marching band. I can hear THOSE coming up the street. And I don’t know where you live, but the cars with thousand watt car stereos blasting rap music are certainly audible over the train, at least stopped near me in traffic.
Be your comments in jest, sarcasm or serious, my point was simple.
Exceptional model scenery has been around for 50 or 60 years, and be it onboard or layout based, the use of sound with model train displays is highly subjective. Likely the most subjective topic in this hobby.
My other hobby is hifi…
I gather from you limited number of posts, and the forum pages where you post most often, that you are not actively involved in model trains?
That’s fine, I still welcome your thoughts.
I was selling model trains when the first Modeltronics onboard sound systems hit the market, and already had 10 years of modeling under my belt then. I’m not much more impressed with onboard sound in small scales today than I was in 1978.
As for cars with loud music, well sure kids around here listen to some rap music, but this is not the “hood”. I live in the very rural suburbs, in a county with only 460 people per sq mile, on the outskirts of a 250 year old historic town of only 13,000 people, we are out here with the dairy cows, horse farms, corn fields, and truck farms (and some of Balimore’s bedroom community suburbs).
Sheldon
I am a vertical modeller - my layout is stacked in the closet. No room here at the senior home. My layouts are way behind me. My Lionel was about 1952, my first HO layout about 1957. My career was in pro audio, think live sound and recording.
To me the salient issue is WHAT is the prespective the sound represents? Am I to imagine standing trackside? Am I to imagine myself a half mile away? Across the street? I can still hear the train from the next city? Are my caboose sounds really to be more audible than my car garage, parade, and police car sounds? At my rural home, the tractor harvesting the cornfield across the street was every bit as loud as the street sweeper across from my urban shop. The semi truck roaring up my road towards town was just as loud as its counterpart in the city. It shook my home, it shook my business.
Personally I would find quiet ambient environmental sounds around the layout more compelling than freight car noises. Just sounds of the city in the background in town, and rural sounds like dogs barking now and then.
Sheldon, Its hard for the younger modelers to realize we had great looking layouts 60s years ago that would rival many of today’s layouts and many of those layouts was built for operation. Many of us used Doug Smith’s car card/waybill method as explain in the December 1961 issue of MR. Today I use a modified version of his method.
As far as sound who can forget Bachmann’s toy like steam whistle or diesel horn in a oil tank much like the metod Lionel used. Then PFM had a Sound system 60 years ago. Who can forget the CTC 16 system?
We did well back then.
On all that we agree. For me, even though I like operation, like you describe, I see sound as a possible extension of the scene, not just an extension of the train.
Today in my travels I was on US40 near Aberdeen, MD. Just 150’ to my left, the ex B&O mainline, to my right, the ex PRR mainline. As fate would have it, an intermodal train was headed east on the B&O line. I rolled down the window. I could barely hear the moving train, I could not hear the refrigeration units running on the Tropicana reefers in the stopped west bound train sitting on the siding…
I was only 150’ away, less than 2 actual feet in HO.
As many on here know, I am between layouts, about to begin a new one, much like the old one, only a little bigger.
And I
I tend to play The Ramones sixth album “Pleasent Dreams” so loud, that I could never hear the sound coming from the trains anyway.
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[;)] Its all about having fun!
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-Kevin
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Those of you who might purchase one of these or a similar loco in the $100+ range, please indulge me for a moment.
If you bought one, would you weather it? If so, would you weather it yourself or outsource the job?
I’m at a place in my hobbying ability where weathering is still something of a risk. Fortunatley if I screw something up, it was likely only an $8 freight car or a $30 caboose. I would be absolutely terrified of screwing up a high-end piece like these cabooses.
I would weather it, no question.
BUT, I’m not one for heavy, or overly detailed, or “extreme” weathering. A little dust, a little grime, maybe just a little rust, is enough for me.
Disclaimer, I don’t ever think of my models in terms of their cost or any future resale value.
Sheldon
I decided not to weather my Spring Mills B&O caboose. I should have bought 2, it sold for 1/2 the price of the Athearn caboose last year, but now that it is NLA they go for about the same price on Ebay.
My other newest rolling stock is Accurail or older Bowser, but the bulk of it is from the 1980’s, therefore dumpster worthy when I kick the bucket.
I have confidence in my weathering ability with airbrush, dry brush and pastels. My oil paint technique needs work, but I am not going to weather my caboose. It will be one of the few things I leave to my heirs that will have resale value.
I would suggest picking up some low priced rolling stock at a train show and practice on them. There is nothing wrong with contracting the job out, either.
It’s been about 10 months now and the Genesis ICC cabooses of a number of types (UP, SP, SSW, Chessie, SCL, Santa Fe) have all been in the stores for a few weeks now. Athearn shows sold of most if not all versions. MBK, usually one of the last to get new items instock, shows about 3/4 of them sold out after less than 24 hours. The sales info seems to indicate these are indeed popular and a success. After all, the price for what you get is generally a good deal less than many decorated brass cabooses.
From the discussion in this topic, many aren’t intersted and vocally so. The nice thing about the hobby is the variety of choice; from basic low cost generic models to prototype specific models and in between.
Universal consisting? I’ll remember that next time I’m running 4 cabeese on a train.
As far as railroads go, the caboose was as much a signature item as the locomotive, no? Look at the detail going into a lot of locomotives being made today such as the ScaleTrains, Genesis and others. If I was still into HO instead of N for my main modeling, I wouldn’t mind having a few of these. After all to me, if modeling a prototype in an era that still needed cabooses, I would want to have them as detailed and true to the prototype as I could get and If I’m willing to pay that for detailed locomotives than why not the caboose? And I am one who is tighter than bark on a tree when it comes to spending money, I’m sure I’ve even spent 6 cents to save a nickel.
Ralph
This reminds me of adding Soundtraxx SoundCar DCC decoders to 4 of my freight cars to try out the effects. The decoder costs $48 (discounted, I presume) today. You add your own speaker and LED lights. I think there was a 3-pack that saved a bit. So the upgrade costs about $55. Just for a ballpark alternative regarding lights plus sound features.
I added the sound and lights to the caboose and sound only to 33 other freight cars, including a mechanical reefer. Then I created a consist of the locos plus the 4 SoundCar cars, after adjusting each car as desired (volume, etc.).
It was an interesting project but after I ran that train awhile on my small layout I put the cars on the shelf and have not bothered to get them going again. I can’t say if I would bother to do it again. It’s one of the features to impress the grandkids, I guess.