I hate them things!!! I mainly see them on NS, and they drive me crazy!!! Here is to banning electronic bells on all locos!!!
Love 'em or hate 'em, get used to 'em, 'cause they’re here to stay. They are pretty reliable, and with no moving parts, takes away a lot of chance it could cause an FRA defect. You will be seeing much more of them in the future. They don’t bother me.
The sound may not be the same as a cast bell, but they don’t plug up in the winter. Considering where most cast bells are mounted these days, that can be a real issue in the parts of the country that have four seasons.
The electronic bells are horrible![:O] Thry sound like fingernails on a blackboard. they should be banned from the railroad scene.
Nothing like the sound of a mechanical bell:
click…click…dingdingdingding…click…click…ding…click
Better learn to love 'em. They are here.
Zugmann, that doesnt really sound like a good reenactment of a electronic bell… Heres a better one:
Lemme just say one word about that bell;
BARF!!!
The traditional bell sounded WAY better than that! The traditional bell also looks good on CPR diesels, mainly the old high hood units.
DEATH TO THE ELECTRONIC BELL,
DEATH TO THE ELECTRONIC BELL,
DEATH TO THE ELECTRONIC BELL, etc.
I HATE all electronic bells on crossings and on locomotives but mostly on crossings because not only do they sound bad they are way to quiet! with a mechanical bell installed you could still hear them loud and clear in your car with the windows up now(at least with the ones where I am) your lucky if you can hear them at all with your windows up or down so I see electronic bells on crossings as a safety hazard! Just my opinion.
WSOR 10C had an electronic bell and a brass bell. The electronic one is mounted over the conductor’s head, and the brass is mounted below the engineer. Guess which one I use?[:D]
You all seem to forget about the gong bell on the nose of CNW units. Can’t hardly hear that one inside the cab.
Sometimes in winter all you get is click, click, click. Other ones go into turbo mode: CLANGCLANGCLANG
WSOR 4009 (ex-MILW SD40-2) used to have electronic bell. Soo and MILW were big on them in the 1970s. It got replaced with a mechanical bell, mounted on conductor’s side, right above and behind the window. Some guys don’t like it…[
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I would suggest that you get up early one winter morning after four inches of snow fell the day before and help the carmen clean out the bells on the cab cars before the morning rush hour.
What I really hate is EMD’s automatic bell (and the idiots that thought it up) that you can’t turn off. It keeps ringing for quite a while after the ditch lights quit flashing. After 134 miles of that crap, I am sooooo ready to climb off that engine.
There are ways to turn them off … I think you need to same key that you need to get 4400hp from an NS dash 9.
If you mean the timer, not the entire bell, let me know how it’s done. Maybe I can talk somebody in the Loco shop into doing just that.
I LOVE THE LOCOMOTIVE ELECTRONIC BELL! I HATE THE RR CROSSING ELECTRONIC BELL!
That was the reenactment of the few mechinical bells I had lately. Now the EMDs with their 30 second cycle is annoying… but at least they work. The locomotive electronic bells aren’t too bad sounding either… not too much of a difference, really.
I just see it as the usual “lets mess with something that works” crap that people love to do. If they get frozen, make the bottom like the new electronic bells, covered. That would keep the ice and snow out. Hmm, why didnt they think of that.
Alec
Here is a gound sounding bell! HAHA THIS VIDEO WAS DEDICATED TO ME!
i dont mind the electronic locomotive bells. they dont sound too different to me.
now those electronic CROSSING bells are another story. especially those damn western cullen hayes bells.
and let’s not forget the crossings with virtual horns. those sound HORRIBLE. ugh
If you heard some of the old SP mechanical gong bells that are in use, those WC Hayes electronic bells don’t sound so bad. There’s one crossing here (Dobson) which has one of those WC Hayes electronic bells for the northbound side, and one of the old gong bells for the southbound side. The southbound starts out strong, within 15-20 seconds you start hearing ‘ding-ding-click-ding-click-click-click-ding-click-click’ and then silence for the duration of activation. That’s typical of a lot of them out here.
UP is replacing them but not quick enough. With those electronic bells, which again, are here to stay. They don’t care about how one thinks of their sound, just that they do their job which is warn traffic. Pedestrian moreso than vehicular traffic.
You can’t really cover a mechanical bell. It also has moving parts that feeze or get clogged up. So, the old way didn’t exactly work as well as you would think. A bell is a very important part of a locomotive. I would like it to work.