Diesel horns

Discuss park gauge trains and large scale miniature railways having track gauges from 8" to 24" gauge and designed at scales of 2" to the foot or greater - whether modeled for personal use, or purpose built for amusement park operation or private railroading.

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Geochurchi
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Diesel horns

Post by Geochurchi »

Hi All, looking for suggestions on which horns to use, right now we are using a couple of car horns, although loud they are not railroad sounds, need something that is not going to overpower the scale of the locomotive , if that makes sense.
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ccvstmr
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by ccvstmr »

George...try shopping for truck or marine horns air horns. Ebay comes to mind. You're not looking for sound level as much as you want as low a note as possible. The longer the horn bell, the lower note. Of course, if you're looking to hide the horn under a hood...space might be a problem. Some web sites have a sound "test" button you can press with a key stroke. Carl B.
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Geochurchi
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by Geochurchi »

Thanks for the reply, space is definitely an issue, hence the car horns.
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Steggy
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by Steggy »

Geochurchi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 17, 2021 4:49 pm Thanks for the reply, space is definitely an issue, hence the car horns.
Geo πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

Depending on the horn and how the tube was fabricated, you might be able to use a precision tubing bender to fold it back on itself like a trombone and cut down on the length.

As Carl notes, you need to shoot for a relatively low pitch if you want a reasonably realistic sound. The Leslie A200-156 β€œhonkers” that were used on the early Diesels, e.g. EMD E- and F-units, as well as some Alco and Baldwin units, were tuned to approximately E3 on the musical scale, which is about 150 Hz. Some truck air horns are close to this pitch.
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0351
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by 0351 »

If you’re wanting to hide the horns, and have a big locomotive sound, you might look at the
Mega Blast PVC horns.
https://www.facebook.com/NSSCOTTEAGUE/

https://youtu.be/4cojRtDWNM4
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Steggy
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by Steggy »

0351 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 18, 2021 2:25 pm If you’re wanting to hide the horns, and have a big locomotive sound, you might look at the
Mega Blast PVC horns.
https://www.facebook.com/NSSCOTTEAGUE/

Fakebook links are kind of useless if one doesn't do social media. You have to have a Fakebook account to see that horn.


I don't think that one is loud enough. :D
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Music isn’t at all difficult.Β  All you gotta do is play the right notes at the right time!Β  :D
steamingon
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by steamingon »

You do not have tp have a Facebook account to see those horns.
Look here; http://twproductionsvideos.com/horns.shtml
A sound clip of K3LA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJGKqfXSobE
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by 0351 »

I don't think that one is loud enough. :D
I’m not sure who would be more annoyed, my wife or the neighbors! :mrgreen:
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Steggy
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by Steggy »

0351 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 19, 2021 11:40 pm
I don't think that one is loud enough. :D
I’m not sure who would be more annoyed, my wife or the neighbors! :mrgreen:

...not to mention everyone else in town.
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rkcarguy
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by rkcarguy »

I've been through quite a bit of research for the same thing. The tone of the car horns is too high and too loud. For something for the novelty of having a horn and not irritating the neighbors, I'm thinking it's going to end up being a horn sound module for model trains ($45), and I will run its speaker output to a small amplifier and a larger speaker than what came with it. The single "chime" on the Baldwin S-12 I'm modeling was only 180Hz, and it's a lower tone than even todays diesels and nearly impossible to find anything off the shelf even close to the right tone.
Most car and truck electric horns are 280-450Hz.
Geochurchi
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by Geochurchi »

Good luck with it, we have a Dallee sound card in our SD45, locomotive RPMs ,bells ,spitters all sound good, it had a selection of whistles but they are recorded sounds, and do not play well for our application, let me know what you use and how it sounds.
If it ain’t broken keep working on it until it is .
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Bill Shields
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Re: Diesel horns

Post by Bill Shields »

There is a not too fine line between being realistic sounding and outright annoying when operating in a club environment.

Having a full size diesel air horn on your model may seem cool...until you frighten or distract someone and the end result is not what is desired.

I can tell you from personal experience that being up close and personal with a full size steam whistle and or air horn can be very detrimental to human hearing and / or psyche.

You want to get people's attention not cause them to soul underwear or seek ENT attention in the ER or become shocked and fall off a riding car.

As much as I hate to admit it...these electronic boxes that can imitate sounds desired at CONTROLLED decibel levels have a lot going for them.
Too many things going on to bother listing them.
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