Subject: Steam Whistle Question....Thanks for straightening me out. I hadn't considered that the same model could be used extensively in non locomotive applications. Your reply may save one of us from wasting money at an auction or other sale.

Claim that your Nathan 3-Chime was on a Big Boy and someone will surely point out that the Union Pacific 4000s, 3900s and 800s all wore Hancocks, not Nathans.

Sincerely,

Nick the Nitpicker ;-)

Actually, if they REALLY know anything, they'll point out it's actually a Manning, Maxwell & Moore whistle. Yeah, yeah, MM&M absorbed Hancock Inspirator, and it was a division of MM&M, but that's what UP "paperwork" says, so that's what UP fanatics say.
</sarcasm>

And for a little on how otherwise identical whistles can sound different on different locomotives:
http://uphs.org/the-streamliner/streaml ... ecordings/

As a teenager, I was given a steam whistle because I showed an early interest, it turned out to be quite a research project and is ongoing. The only clues I had to an 1887 Crosby was that it was given as a retirement gift to the father of the person that gave it to me; he was one of the last passenger engineers on the Black Diamond. Supposedly this whistle was used in Sayre, where he lived and was based out of. It was a smaller whistle, all brass, very nice shape.

Problem was that EVERY LV expert I talked to said that every LV locomotive had whistles other that Crosby's and I'd have to go back to the 1800's to find anything that small, an never a stock whistle. Every loco shot I studied certainly didn't have anything like that on it. At that point, none of the evidence I found made any sense at all. LV, certainly in the 1940's through the 1960's, had no Crosby's on anything I could find in road service.

It took some work, but I found ONE LV shop switcher, the one at Sayre, that had a small, Crosby-style whistle on it - and that explained the mystery of how a small, 1800's style brass whistle would have survived long enough on the LV to have been squirreled away in Sayre and later given as a retirement gift. I 'think' this is it.

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/lv3358s.jpg

That little tank engine probably outlasted everything around it.

Along the way I met real whistleblowers, and got to take this one to a whistlefest at Altoona and have my kids blow it on air. I finally understood how it would have been saved by the guys at Sayre, it's a sweet whistle. But tracking it and finding some evidence, yeah, that was just as much fun.

I also discovered (as many hear will knowingly nod to) that the whistle and horn guys are another subculture of this passion that I had absolutely no idea about and found I know far less than I ever imagined!

Randy -

As I've said about other steamers, they saved the wrong end of the engine! Seriously though, great that you have the whistle off of LV 3358. That's something at least!

Les