SOUND IN STEAM LOCOS

[cleanerg6e]

I have a lot of steam locos fitted with Howes sound. Everything from a Jinty to a Duchess, a 9F, a Merchant Navy etc. I found that some of the locos are extremely quiet and on opening the tender (where most of my speakers are housed) that there are metal filings ahereing to the speaker diaphragm which shows that after drilling through the tender weights the holes were not cleaned out with a rat tail file or that the entire area was not made free of debris.

I've also been moving speakers about in tenders and instead of having the speaker fixed to the top of the water space, I drill through the coal space with a 3mm drill bit and through the coal load making sure that there is no debris to fall onto the speaker. The level of sound is astonishing and I often have to turn the sound down. Unless you look REALLY closely you can't see the holes in the coal load and I can now hear the loco from across the garden even with all the road noise out the front.

One thing that cheeses me off is that some of my locos all have the same tone of whistle, such as my Stanier Duchesses, Princesses, Royal Scot, Jubilee, Black 5 and 8F. I asked Howes for a slight variation in tone and was told 'we're too busy to do that'. I also asked if they could use whistles from the Peter Hanford collection and was told 'no that's against copyright'. Yet on you tube people upload a video with music that they've bought on a CD such a 'Grumpygrandad' who uses Elgar as music to his OO garden railway shots. I also asked for the two whistles that GWR locos had and was told 'we're too busy on other projects to do that. But if your prepared pay for it you should get what you want not what your told you can have. I'll try DCC Concepts they maybe more willing as I only want the whistle tones not the whole recording.

Roy.

[mick]

I have a G2A that had been fitted with sound by a previous owner. It too was a Howes sound recording and like those you mention, the speaker was housed within the tender facing downwards. It was so quiet; very disappointing. I decided first of all to change the speaker and then to turn it round so that it fired upwards through some holes drilled in the plastic dummy coal load. A nice improvement both to the quality and audibility of the sound. Some carefully placed lumps of real coal disguise the drilled openings and still allow the sound to escape.

I've read your praise for the Howes recordings in the past but this is the first time I've sensed any dissatisfaction. Strangely enough, 12 months or so ago if you were to consider getting any loco sound chips then the advice you were given was always "go to Howes". Now, reading other online forums, it appears that there are other (better?) options in some cases.

[cleanerg6e]

With forthcoming NRM loco 'Butler Henderson' I'll be looking to DCC Concepts as I have video footage of that loco on the Great Central Railway in the 1980's. Some say that maybe we expect to much from sound decoders. Well if you listen to say an A4 whistle when stationary and then hear that loco whistle at speed the whistle sound at speed is two to three tones higher. With ESU sound decoders F1 is sound on/off. F2 long whistle. F3 short whistle. So could they not make F2 the long stationary whistle and F3 a long high speed whistle. If you want a short whistle then just push F2 twice quickly. Howes made the F2 and F3 functions on my class 45 duel function buttons. Usually you press F2 and you get a high/low horn sound. Press F3 and you get low/high. Press F4 and you get either short low or high which ever they've programmed into the decoder.

With my class 45 press F2 and you get long high press F2 again you get short low. On F3 it's the other way round. On F4 it's long low until you press F4 again. if you want short low you just press F4 twice. A great set up as it allows people who only have 5 function buttons a bit more of a variety. I have 28 function buttons. I mentioned that to Howes but still you only get what they have and they won't do a special job claiming they're too busy. My A4's have generic sounds in them and I'm not happy with them. They even refused to use sounds off video footage that I took of 60007 on the NYMR in 2000 saying they preferred their generic sounds.

So the motto is ONLY have sounds fitted to a loco that YOU want and DON'T settle for what a sound engineer has. If you want YOUR sounds in YOUR locos then tell them that and if they won't play ball then go elsewhere.

It seems to me that Howes is like a financial institution and that your money is only yours whilst it's in your hands. Once it's in there hands they will do what they like and you'll get back what they want you to have when they want you to have it.

Roy.

[Riddles]

One big disappointment I had was with the BachmannJubilee "Kolhapur". I was fairly happy with the sound but what annoyed me was that they had programmed it so that the hooter ALWAYS blew by itself whenever the loco was started to move. I know that a driver should always sound the whistle before moving off but that is something that I can do myself with Function 2. I phoned South West Digital, who make Bachmann's sound projects, and they said that it would be quite expensive to remove the unwanted feature. I can't remember the exact figure but I think it was between £25 and £45.

In the end I took the loco to Olivias Trains in Sheffield and they loaded their own project for £10.

I have to say that I am impressed with the three Howes sound chips I bought although they are expensive.

Last week I saw and heard Digitrains A4 which was also wired to a Seuthe smoke generator and this had a very impressive Gresley chime whistle sound. They only sell the parts but don't fit them.

[mick]

DCC sound leaves a lot to be desired but I hope it is getting better. I have one particular steam loco that emits the sound of steam exhaust (not sure what the particular sound signifies) 3 times before setting off. At first it wasn't noticeable, then it was, and after a while it becomes plain annoying. I conatcted the sound programmer who requested the chip be returned before anything could be done but extracting the chip from the loco and sending it away for reblowing - well, I still haven't got round to doing it.

I sympathise with the point made by Riddles, as the sound of the steam exhaust could easily be played, if and when desired, by the train operator using a function key on the controller so why programme it to blow automatically 3 times before every move away? Such things makes every similar loco sound exactly the same.

I've read encouraging reports about the Digitrains decoders - will probably have to give them a try in the near future.

[cleanerg6e]

Howes did a Hornby A4 for me and the bloke who did it broke the little 'T' piece of plastic that holds the tender body to the chassis he tried to glue it with superglue as the inside of the tender body and the speaker face is white from the fumes given off by the glue. I managed to glue it back with Araldite which is what he should have used. He also gave it a slip feature so when you start on speed step 1 you get the sounds of a loco slipping but not the vision of the driving wheels spinning as they're just slowly moving on speed step 1. I wish that the engineers as they call themselves would spend more time getting the accurate sound of locos rather than useless gimmicks.

For me personally things like glowing fireboxes, fake slipping are a waste of time. I don't even like the smoke effects from the Seuthe smoke generator which to my eyes is more at home in a farm house chimney than a loco. When a steam engine starts whether it be light engine or with a heavy or light train you get a blast out of the chimney of grey to black smoke. You can't get that with a Seuthe smoke generator. If you get a blast of continuous white steam it usually means the loco is priming.

Roy.