Railsounds 4.0 etc.

[C&NW]

Hello all and happy Friday.

I'm in need of a little education on Lionel sound systems.  Is Railsounds 4.0 the most up-to-date system Lionel has?  If so, when was it introduced?  I was researching a Santa Fe FT set cataloged in 2001 (Vol 2)...set #6-21973.  I spoke with a Lionel customer service rep who indicated the diesel unit had Railsounds 4.0 (I repeated it back to make sure I heard right).

Can anyone give me a brief overview or outline the sound system progression for  Lionel?  For example, did it go: Railsounds, Railsounds 2.5, Railsounds 4.0, etc.  Finally, where does "Trainsounds" fit into the mix?  Thanks much.

Paul

 

[Kooljock1]

The current level of RailSounds is "5 point something".  RailSounds 5.0 and up feature quilling whistle and bells that can either ring single hits or get locked-in the on position.

RailSounds was the original, non-digital sound system.  There were two sound sets; steam or diesel. 

When the short-lived RailSounds 2 system was introduced, it featured "sounds recorded from the prototype".

RailSounds 2.5 linked the sound system to the TMCC system.

From there on, the improvements were continuous and incremental.  For instance, RailSounds 4.5 included multi-part dialogue between the cab and tower, whereas earlier TowerCom was unintelligible.  

RailSounds 5 was really designed to react to Legacy, but works just fine in TMCC mode as well.

 

Jon 

[C&NW]

Jon -

Thanks a bunch for your response. If I could follow-up, you indicated that RailSounds 4.5 replaced an earlier version of TowerCom that was unintelligible.  Do you know what version of Railsounds had the TowerCom that did not sound good/was unintelligible?

Also, is the deisel TrainSounds a decent system?  I heard a steam Trainsounds unit that sounded a bit like a machine gun when running (okay, that may be overstating it a bit, but the steam Railsounds definitely sounded better).  Thanks again. Paul