I was out train watching just a little bit ago. At about 1:00 PM I heard a steam whistle. I know it was not my imagination because I heard it a few times. I have no idea where it was. I was at the Amtrak station where the two major mainlines through Omaha pass (UP and BNSF) and it never went by. We have some other tracks nearby that are not visible from the station, but I have no idea why it would have been on those tracks. In any event, I was wondering if anyone here could let me know if there really was a steam train in Omaha, or if I’m just going crazy.
If there actually was a steam engine in Omaha, near the UP system it was probably UP 844 Northern (Steve Lee’s choo choo). I think the business/passenger fleet resides in Council Bluffs. There’s always a lot of heritage rail activity there. Last Memorial Day I saw the DD40 pulling such a train north out of there.
Any chance it’s the steamer at the Zoo? We were there over Labor Day, and it seemed a lot louder and deeper pitched than in the past. If the wind was blowing out of the south, maybe it carried that far?
I’ll bet you’ve got it! The winds were blowing out of the south pretty strong. Also, now that I think about it, it did kind of sound like the zoo locomotive. Conditions must have been perfect for that sound to carry pretty far since I’ve never heard the zoo steamer as far away as the Amtrak station.
Went to google earth and looked at council bluffs omaha, wow found 3 turntables. Are they all still there, who knows how old the sat picture is ? Just once I’d like to be poking around and actually find a steamer out in the open, lol. Google and this forum are about as close as i’m going to get here in florida.
My son and his wife and I were sitting and chatting on my back porch deck one afternoon when he got this odd expression on his face. I asked what was the matter and lowered his head and said, “I must have steam engines on my brain… I swear I just heard a steam whistle. Really nice sounding chime whistle. I know it must be just me because you didn’t jump up and head for the car.”
We chuckled about it for a minute or two. After they left, about anhour later, I headed into the kitchen that the deck is just off of… and what I heard then explained what he had heard… I have one of those clocks that gives out random railroad sounds on the hour. The sounds make no sense as to the hour they represent, nor do they make any sense as to the sequence of sounds played at any hour, but they sure are realistic [:D]!
I wrote an “Alarm clock” program for my PC that plays any sounds I want on the quarter hours (and ‘strikes’ the hour) and for any alarms that I set… I have a set of whistle sounds that I use for most of them. Where I worked the sounds used to drive one of my co-workers nuts… there was a rail line just across the parking lot and he would jump up to see the train every time one of my alarms went off. Hee hee hee.
Nope, All the steamers for the UP are kept in Cheyenne but the passenger cars are kept in Council Bluffs. And right now the UP 844 is out running Oklahoma Centennial Sooner Rocket in what I assume is Oklahoma.
Hey Semper, Where would I get a Steam Whistle that sounds close to the 844 or Challenger Whistle?
My dad, future son-in-law, and I managed to get trackside for about an hour this afternoon while the ladies attended a bridal shower, but the UP was being very uncooperative. We saw only one westbound coal drag come through as we were leaving the Sac and Fox trailhead east of the Cedar River. While we were eating dinner at a local restaurant/motel combination tonight, several UP MOW trucks pulled into the motel, which probably explains the lack of trains. Monday there’s a private varnish special coming into town via the CN line from Dubuque/Manchester, and then heading up the Iowa Northern to Waterloo and points west, all the way to Council Bluffs (heads up, Willy!). Fuzzybroken has the schedule on his forum- http://www.fuzzyworld3.com/3um/viewtopic.php?t=1459. I may just take some time off of work to go get some shots of it.
I get most of my sounds from various web sites about steam whistles or locomotives. The one got most of my sounds from several years ago is gone, so do a Google search for Steam Whistles and see what you find. Some sounds will be labeled as what they are from, but I have found that many do not sound like what I have heard when I saw the engine that it is claimed to be from. (That may be because sometimes whistles are shared and loaned around and what was recorded was not the same whistle that I have heard. Nowadays, some locomotives have several whistles!)
The file I have that was labeled as being the UP-844 is way too high for what was on it when it came through here several years ago. So I don’t trust what I have in the way of .wav files per the locomotive it is purported to be from… I just use them because I like the sounds!
I have lifted others from videos and such.
I also have a sound editing program (“CoolEdit” from Syntrillium) that I use to take a simple short blast sound and turn it into the ‘long-long-short-long’ grade-crossing signal… It can also change the pitch and add echo and all sorts of marvelous things.
A couple of years ago, when we were at the zoo, the whistle on the steamer was so high pitched, that it sounded like the “peep-peep” sound effect on a Thomas the Tank Engine video. This time, it actually sounded like a whistle on a steam engine. "Made me smile every time I heard it.[8D]