Some links for reference, featuring currently available material:

http://www.semaphorerecords.com/

http://www.semaphorerecords.com/products.html

http://www.semaphorerecords.com/Discography.html

The O. Winston Link Museum, and its shopping page:

http://www.linkmuseum.org/

http://linkmuseumshop.com/

http://linkmuseumshop.com/shop/audio-visual/

(Oh, man, I look at Link's photos there, and boy, do I feel I live in the wrong time!)

Railroad Record Club material seems to be semi-hard to come by; some discussion of this from Kalmbach's Classic Trains site below.

http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/t/6455.aspx

I have one RRC record, featuring the then regular service East Broad Top.

Brooks Stover has a site dedicated to the Buffalo Creek and Gauley, and references to available video and sound sources for that road. Turn on your speakers for his home page:

http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/

http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/RE ... ENCES.html

http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/RE ... dings.html

Having listened to some of these, including all of Link's material, I am reminded of old-time radio and its shows, and how radio was described as "the theater of the mind." Those of you who have listened to old radio, and to these recordings, know how true this is.

Oh, I do live in the wrong time. . .

Read through the earlier-linked bio of Peter Handford. He was a top sound engineer with the movie studios of Britain, using the "state of the art" sound recording technology, which he often "appropriated" from the studios for the weekend to make rail audio recordings. You hear his handiwork in many of the noted movies of the era, including Murder On the Orient Express and The Lady Vanishes.

A seemingly complete rail discography of his, and you thought YOU had a few recordings?:

http://www.steamindex.com/library/handford.htm

ADM4, I didn't take note that Handford was the sound person on those films, but I did note that the sound was mostly accurate and of good quality, particularly in "Murder On The Orient Express" (among other things, noting that the sound, as heard from "inside" the train, changed as the train went through a cut). I'll have to keep an eye out for his credit lines in other movies.

But, Alas! Where are the Technicolor, accurately researched and well-written and photographed (with quality and correctly synchronized sound) releases of Hollister Noble's "One Way to Eldorado," Frank Spearman's "Held For Orders," or other material by noted rail authors of that time?

I can understand why this material wasn't made in the 1970s or later, but why not in the 1940s and 1950s?

mobile fidelity is still around

http://www.mofi.com/Articles.asp?ID=255

havent tried to see if the steam recordings are available

I looked but did not see any steam recordings there, but some others I would be interested in. Back to steam...there was another recording out not too long ago that had different steam locomotives meeting each other which never did in either regular service or the excursion era. Anybody know what that recording was?

I believe the recordings you are thinking of are "The Sounds of Trains" Vol 1-4 from the Mobile Fidelity collection. These were recordings that mixed two separate tracks together to give the illusion that the trains were meeting or passing. I bought two of these CD's, but no more. Mildly interesting, but very fake. The mixing part could be done with any two recordings and wasn't that exciting. Brad Miller released so many other really good recordings, I feel these just aren't his best effort.

Daylight sales is now the distributor for the Mobile Fidelity releases if you want to obtain some of those recordings.

http://www.daylightsales.com

Having done railroad recordings for almost 30 years, I highly recommend the other titles in the Mobile Fidelity line.

This thread reminded me of a vinyl recording given to me many years ago.
Ttled "Songs and Sounds of The Great Days of Steam" It has four O. W. Link recordings, titled Run From Keysone to North Fork, WV (A N&W J class 4-8-4), Switch Engine in Roanoke Station, Merchandise Time Freight Leaving Bedford, VA, (An A - 2-6-6-4) and Train Station at North Fork WV.
The rest is just crappy country western sounding songs that have no special appeal.
But the four steam recordings are ok.
I looked in the O.W. Link museum site for recordings and found they have several, but not this, or these particular recordings of operating steam.
I'd like to know if this record is available on a CD?
Also if anyone has the same recording. It has a fair amount of whistle work.
Mark D.

Mark, I've heard that record (which was a release by Carstens Publications, of Railfan and Railroad Model Craftsman fame--the singer was Dan Igor Glenn if I recall, a Disney voice artist). All four of those sequences are on Link's last album, "Mainline to Panther." There are a lot of other things on that one, including a whole side being a composite of a run with a later Class A (roller rod model) on a time freight (that start at Bedford is a shortened segment from this side). The same side includes some commentary by Link, who was riding the roof (!) of a caboose cut in behind the tender (and his position ahead of the cupola wasn't enough to keep the stench of the brakeman's cigar away).

The highlight of this is the assault on Blue Ridge with something like 20% tonnage overload. There's a hard start, made by taking slack, but still with two or three slips (this was at Bedford, and is edited out for some reason on the Carstens release). After a stretch of very high speed running with an exhaust that sounds more like an open safety valve, the engine claws its way up the hill, and almost makes it--uneven switches in a crossover in sight of the station at the summit cause the train to stall in some of the most furious slipping you ever heard, coming in short, instantaneous bursts, quickly quieted by an engineer who, like Ross Rowland on 2101, must have had his hand on the throttle ready for them. Alas, the train lost too much momentum, and the last attempt fails to keep it moving. Help comes from a Y-6 pusher. With whistle signals and a fury of distant exhausts from the Y-6, the train starts easily for the last bit of distance to the summit.

This would also be a part of the O. Winston Link boxed set available from the museum in Roanoke. I have the lot on vinyl, so I'm not in the market, but the last I checked it was something like $125 for the complete set, and I would consider it worth it.

Has anyone checked iTunes? There are a couple of Railroad "sound effect" albums listed there, such as "Steel Rail and Thundering Skies."

I did get "Steel Rail and Thundering Skies". In all honesty, it sounds like they got ordinary runbys of each of those engines (maybe from the actual engine, who knows), and then put a generic "thunderstorm" background track with each one. Is it real? I have my doubts, but I could be wrong.

You have it right. It's likely the actual locomotives listed, but with a thunderstorm track that was not happening at the time the locos were recorded. The two tracks are simply mixed together. IOW fake.

In his early years, Brad Miller did a mix like that and it was played on a radio station in (I think) San Francisco. It apparently was very popular and he did a number of other productions using a backgroud weather track mixed with music. It is mildly interesting, but I'm guessing most here who are interested in railroad recordings aren't interested in a faked scene. A little like combining photos of two different locomotives that would never be seen together in real life.

Part of any media production or broadcast facility over the years was a good sound library. Mostly comprised of copyright free music and sound effects for production use. I rescued one such old mono LP from the dumpster at a former employer switching to CDs. It’s the “railroad sounds” portion of the CBS sound library (EZQ 1033). I was surprised to hear the track titled “Station Atmospheres” it took me right back to when I was a kid. If you listen closely you can hear the echoic departure page for “Superdome Hiawatha Service” from what must be Union Station in Chicago.
There are a lot of used vinyl sites out there and this as well as many other old railroad recordings are out there.

The Railroad Record Club was a hobby operation run by Bill Steventon in Hawkins, WI. Bill would edit tapes either sent to him by his friends, or from his own work, make a master tape, and send it off RCA's custom record plant. Bill has passed away, but about 10 years ago I corresponded with his son. The son had all of the original masters and was "going to" reissue them on either cassette or CD. I got laid off my job at the time and lost track of the Steventons, but it's possible the tapes have yet survived. There was some extremely rare stuff in the collection dating back as early as 1949. One of my favorites was of a telegraph sounder at a Soo Line depot with an engine switching in the background. Another great one was of the Timken 4-8-4, NP 2626, in Washington state.

You also might try the Smithsonian Institute. They have for sale cassette tapes of a lot of steam locomotive operations, such as a recording of CB&Q 5629 entering the yard at Lincoln, NE, in 1957. I think these can be purchased on-line. There is a lot of rare CB&Q recordings there.

Finding copies of original vinyl railroad recordings is getting difficult, but persistence pays off. Some of the best were by Stan Kistler, but hard to find now.

Best Regards, Eddy

Carlos's Sonic Seasonings has that flavor, perhaps influenced (non railroad, but same effect)

interesting....but anyways...

as a kid listening to it I never thought..but reading the details on the album, it mentions it...kinda subtly