Do Diffrent Railroads have diffrent tones of Whistles...

[Anonymous]

Juntionfan is a Musicain? Wow[:X][:I][:I]! maybe he is Rod Stewart incognito!

[tree68]

The type of horn being an option (having a horn being mandatory), I'm sure that "favorites" play heavily into what horn is installed on a given loco order. Things like maintenance problems notwithstanding, "tradition" and the longevity of the person/department writing the specs probably play heavily into the end product.

At least one of the horn sites gives some actual design pitches for the individual horns of different models.

[AntonioFP45]

Re: U.S and Canadian horns.

The Canadian K5H is tuned differently than the American K5H. Last I checked there were samples of the two at Five Chime Horn Consultants. Just type that in on your search engine and it should lead you to the sight.

Matt Donnelly is the host and has a lot of other good horn samples, my favorite being the SL4T used by Amtrak in the 70s. Neat sounding "trill", but they were maintenance headaches so they're rare today.

[Junctionfan]

Some the Canadian tones are in major triads and the American ones seem to be in minor triads. Is that what you mean?

[Overmod]

Something that bears mentioning is that Canadian horns have a Government-mandated chord that is different from most American tunings. That in itself gives a unique and distinctive sound. Junctionfan, as a musician, can comment on this.

[Junctionfan]

I can think of one example to support that. The UP AC6000CWs don't sound a thing like the CSX ones. I have heard a few of UP's and CSX's; the difference is remarkable.

[Anonymous]

I've notice Amtrak K5LA's sound different from NS K5LA's.

[Overmod]

If you mean horns -- often, yes. Look at some of the available "horn" sites on the Web, for instance. Some roads have distinctive horns for different classes of locomotive, too.

The engineer can easily change the sound on some multichime horns if he (or she) can regulate the amount of air admitted. Small volume of air only excites some of the diaphragms (don't get too excited, kmc7, it's part of the horn's mechanism ;-}) and so only some of the trumpets 'speak'.

There can be distinctive notes -- in many cases, 'noises' would be a much more appropriate word -- if some of the horn trumpets become damaged or blocked up. There was a post a few months back about 'snow bonnets' covering the mouths of some horns in wintertime (oltmannd is an expert on the subject) to help prevent this happening with icing or compacted snow.

Whistles -- steam whistles -- were another story entirely. Very different road-to-road, and I think usually locomotive-to-locomotive.

[Anonymous]

Maybe its possible for the engineer to change the sound.

keep asking keep learning

[Anonymous]

Seems that NS is higher pitched then CSX and UP is a little diffrent too...