Diesel horns

[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.
Geo

[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.

[Geochurchi]

Thanks for the reply, space is definitely an issue, hence the car horns.
Geo

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Thanks for the reply, space is definitely an issue, hence the car horns.
Geo

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 “honkers” 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.

[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

[BigDumbDinosaur]

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.

https://youtu.be/4cojRtDWNM4

I don't think that one is loud enough.

[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

[0351]

https://youtu.be/4cojRtDWNM4

I don't think that one is loud enough.

I’m not sure who would be more annoyed, my wife or the neighbors!

[BigDumbDinosaur]

https://youtu.be/4cojRtDWNM4

I don't think that one is loud enough.

I’m not sure who would be more annoyed, my wife or the neighbors!

...not to mention everyone else in town.

[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]

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.

[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.