I have an athearn rtr ho scale great northern f7 unit with an econami sound decoder, and I am trying to figure out the correct horn sound. According to the soundtraxx website, it was either the leslie a200 or the leslie a125. I believe I currently have it set to the a200. Is that prototypically correct?
I'm beginning to realize that Windows 10 and sound decoders have a lot in common. There are so many things you have to change in order to get them to work the way you want.
I am not a GN aficionado, but I would be surprised to find an F-unit using the smaller diaphragm size for anything but a backup horn. So I think you are right to go with the A-200.
See this page for reference.
Some people think the A-200 means the horn blows 200Hz. That is not correct. Note the different pitches achievable by each bell for the various diaphragm sizes. So there is a follow-up question involving the particular pitch used by GN on the locomotive you're wanting to model... which determines the bell dimensions as modeled...
According to an article in the files of the GN Group, it would be a Leslie A-200.
Ed
I believe all GN F-units came with the single-bell airhorns (one facing front and one facing back) but from photos I've seen, at least some were changed to three-chime horns, most likely sometime in the early 1960's. (I recently purchased an A-B-A set of GN F-7s and was looking at pics to determine if the the horns were correct or not.)
So it sounds like I got the right horn. I wonder about the bell? I set it to one that sounded close to the walters GN f7's that I saw in videos. I believe it is the electronic one, but don't qoute me on that. Is that what GN f7's used?
BNSF UP and others modeler I wonder about the bell? I set it to one that sounded close to the walters GN f7's that I saw in videos. I believe it is the electronic one, but don't qoute me on that. Is that what GN f7's used?
I wonder about the bell? I set it to one that sounded close to the walters GN f7's that I saw in videos. I believe it is the electronic one, but don't qoute me on that. Is that what GN f7's used?
They didn't have electronic bells when GN used those horns on their F's. It'll be some kind of air-ring bell.
ok yes. It is an air bell that I have the cv set for. Is that the correct one?
There is at least one good site on the Web (it's oriented toward 1:1 bell collectors) that goes into deep detail about the different kinds of EMD bell in this period, and I believe has samples both of the 'tone' from the bronze or steel variants and of the particular actuation mechanisms. That might be a bit more than you want to know but it would answer the question of which file in a decoder would be 'best' (or how to create and upload a better one)