Railsounds Information

[ole1]

I belong to a railroad club that has that has several layouts and I'm primarily involved with working on our small three rail layout. There are only a couple of us who generally work on this layout and our interests tend toward the older Lionel and Marx trains of our youth so some of the newer innovations are a bit foreign to us as were kind of 1940's and 50's guys both in technology and taste but we do have one newer engine that has the bell and whistle tender so we added a bell activation button to our ZW and that works fine. Then the other night a young fellow and his son brought in a new engine and tender with Railsounds that has the whistle, chuff, bell and crew talk and I'll have to admit that I was impressed. What I'd like to find out is some information on the chronology of Railsounds as to what was/is made, when and what sounds were included. I've visited the Lionel website and have some idea and I've checked out eBay to see what's out there but I haven't gotten a good handle on what I'm looking at yet. (Probably part of being an old geezer) Also are there any after market packages availible that could be installed in older tenders? At some point I'll get in to the Lionel store but for me that's about a 150 mile trip so I don't make that trip to often. Any help would be appreciated. Ole
P.S. You can visit the club at www.luceline.tripod.com

[laz 57]

OLE1
Try this site..............
http://www.tastudios.com/cruise_control.htm
Scroll down and find the examples of sound of engines hope this helps.
laz57

[Kooljock1]

ole1,

The above post is right-on for getting RailSounds retro-fits for your older engines. TAS can also do the installs for you for an extra charge. As you can see from the list on the TAS web site, they have quite the assortment of sounds available.

But LIONEL has made some changes in their RailSounds program this year. Now if you want more generic sounds for your non-TMCC equipped engines, you may want TrainSounds. LIONEL has TrainSounds boxcars available for both steam and diesel for around $100. These are the same sound-sets that come in LIONEL starter sets like The New York Central Flyer. And they're pretty good.

LIONEL RailSounds, such as those that come with the more expensive TMCC equipped engines, both steam and diesel, have engine specific sounds. That means that as close as realistically possible, the engine will actually sound like its prototype. At times LIONEL sound engineers have gone to great lengths to ensure sound authenticity, including borrowing whistles of long-scrapped engines from static display at museums, and having them fit to working boilers to re-create the sounds of say, a J3a Hudson.

The history of RailSounds could cover it's own book, suffice to say:

1989: LIONEL introduces RailSounds in the Pennsy B6 switcher. It is not yet digital, and fairly rudementary and generic, but it's a leap ahead of air-whistles and The Mighty Sound of Steam.

1990: More RailSounds equipped engines, and now RailSounds for diesel.

1994-95: RailSounds 2.0 is actually digital recordings of real trains, but installed on pre-TMCC equipped engines.

Late 1995: RailSounds and TMCC are paired together for the first time, on engines such as the B&A Hudson...built on Post War tooling.

1996: RailSounds 2.5 adds sounds such as couplers, brake squeal, etc.

After this, it all becomes a blur of added features and sounds, higher availability and usage of memory storage, higher quality sound-boards and better speakers culminating in:

RailSounds 5.0 paired with one or sometimes two "FatBoy" speakers, this system actually sounds and feels like you've got a real locomotive in the room!

Along the way LIONEL has also released items such as passenger car sounds complete with conductors, ticket punching, and dining car reservations calls...a sound car to match the #44 and #45 Missile Trains complete with klaxons, sirens, and missile firing sounds...a fire train car with sirens, bells, and engine noises, and last but not least a sound car to provide sounds for the scale TMCC crane cars.

But as I say, this is only a brief, brief history...

Jon [8D]