The discussion in the 765 over Horse Shoe Curve topic leads me to pose this.

There are some good items available for purchase these days that bring back the now long-gone SOUNDS of railroading, not only locomotive sounds but such things as communications in towers, sounds of armstrong levers being thrown, Station announcers, etc.

(shameless plug here, and I am not a partner in this business)
Alan Botto created Semaphore Records in the early 1960s, starting with Reading's Iron Horse Rambles, and going on to many many steam recording projects, including some real vintage stuff such as early PRR, B&O, and other RRs. He is now in the midst of re-mastering and issuing alot of these records on digital audio CDs.

I had the good fortune to acquire the bulk of tapes of a noted steam man who was affiliated with Cass for many years. I became friends with ''Rich'' when he helped me with the lettering of C&O 614 at New Hope in '96. A few weeks before he passed away, he wanted someone to preserve his collection of the recordings he made, as he was afraid they would be thrown away.

He recorded train sounds from the late 50's up to the early 2000's. He loved steam whistles and at one time he had a massive collection, most of which he made recordings of. The unfortunate part is, some of the earliest tapes he used are deteriating to the point that they are difficult to run through a player. My challenge is to try to preserve this material and get it copied over to some other media before the tapes are completely unusable.

If you folks know of anyone who has such old recordings, make sure they are aware that sometimes these tapes become brittle to the point that they tear when they are put through a player. Nothing is as good as the original, but a copy is better than nothing at all.

I love the Semaphore Recordings...have a few of them myself...including a few rare ones that were on record that I transferred myself to my computer...I can't wait for more releases!

I fear that we are losing a much more important sound than the sound of locomotives and trains and that is the voices of those who worked the trains. It may not be too late, but we are rapidly losing ground. I don't know how to go about doing this on a coordinated basis, but I would love to see a major push to seek out old railroaders and record their recollections of working on the railroad in the days of steam.

Sure it is great to hear recordings of steam engines around Horseshoe, but what was it like firing pushers for 12+ hours? Really the youngest steam men with much experience are now in their 80s. (you were 20 when you started firing in 1952 and you fired steam for 4-5 years before it was over)

Of course voice recordings won't turn on many people at the museum or sell many CDs. Folks want the wow effect of thundering locomotives. Perhaps a good project to integrate the two in a collection.

With so many privacy laws how do I locate old railroaders to interview them?

There are many railroad industry retirees all around the country who get together in informal groups to renew acquaintance and share their experiences. You find out where the groups meet and who runs them, usually through someone still employed in the industry. Then get in touch with the group organizer and ask them if you can attend, or if they would express to the group your interest in doing recorded interviews. Once you start doing interviews, ask the people you interview if they would let their friends know of your activity and perhaps recommend others you can talk with. Also ask them if they know of similar groups meeting in other cities or related to other railroads or industry suppliers.

Unfortunately you are absolutely correct, railroad enthusiasts and people in the preservation industry tend to place a higher value on recording locomotives than recording interviews.

PC

Work through the unions and Railroad Retirement.

dave

In this day and age when you pretty much can't buy a camera without video in it, and the top end ones doing high quality 1080P output, there's really no reason not to do video. Put the thing on a tripod, lock it down, plug in a mic if you can and start recording.

You don't have to be Steven Spielberg, I can assure you that even the most basic of videos will be appreciated by future generations. (Assuming you use a tripod rather than waving it around to get everyone seasick)

get them copied ASAP on a machine that is -gentle- on tape.

Theres some fellow in NY who is selling old railroad sounds NOT found from commercial sources, good collection, their invaluable to modeling etc etc.

Well I beg to differ on not needing a Steven Spielberg to record even fair audio, much less something suitable for an archive. Even Steve relies on professional sound recordists.
Most people might think this recording to be just great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk6h-LlhF7k
It sucks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa5xQFLwXKU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAPZCmhy ... ure=relmfu
Ditto.
Wind noise, being too close without a proper mic, no clue as to level setting, overloading and distortion when the whistle blows. The over modulation into the consumer grade recorders. Audio level dumping down from cheap AGC, followed by the background noise pumping back up afterward. (Not to mention one long hooooot having nothing to do with the use of a whistle)
And this is typical of almost all railroad recordings I have encountered, including most passed off as professional.
If you want a high quality audio recording, you need professional equipment operated by an audio person with years of experience.

I think both Bob and Buzz are right, but in different senses.

I'd agree that it's 'more' important to have video or audio at all, regardless of whether or not the person recording it fully understands the complexities of proper audio recording, or has the right equipment to do it correctly.

I'd also agree that very few, if any "1080P stick video recorders" have anywhere near the kind of capability needed for proper railroad-sound recording. Even if they have the right sort of external microphones plugged into them. The automatic gain control, equalization, etc. are all geared toward 'people' activities -- much as automatic modes on most consumer cameras are geared toward things like framing people's faces in groups, detecting when people are smiling, etc. One great difference is that, while many cameras give proper manual control or adjustment of the exposure, very few on the market now have controls for the audio.

Would be nice if people whether intending to shoot video or notz also brought something optimized for good audio -- perhaps a middle ground with enough capture of dynamic range and proper compression/limiting. (I believe there are SD-card-based audio recorders that will do 48kHz stereo at better than 20-bit resolution available cheaply, although whether or not these have good level/peak meters or proper limiters I can't say.) Microphones need to be good, and have good windshields; I also think they should be fairly directional. The right kind of recorder won't save its files with a 'lossy' encoded compression scheme like MPEG mp3 or have consumer-level slow AGC. The basic idea would be (as with an Adams zone-system negative) to capture as much of the audio material as possible, across a reasonable dynamic range and with as little compression or loss as possible in the capture, so that subsequent post-processing (by audio experts) can produce the most effective sound equivalent. It might even be possible to rig up something -- perhaps a hat with boom mikes on it -- that would capture proper audio "in the background" while a photographer is setting up, working, or even just looking around. And it's a comparatively simple matter to dub good audio back into a video stream that was being recorded at the same time...


RME

(I speak as someone who rigged up a car battery with a handle and an inverter to run one of the original old Advent cassette decks -- remember the ones with only one VU meter? -- to record the wonderful sounds of MP54s between 30th Street and Swarthmore in 1973. Scarcely 'professional' with respect to setting levels, avoiding peak clipping, and the like... but certainly relatively good fidelity in average sound quality for the time, and perhaps more importantly, better than the alternatives at that time: hiring a sound engineer with mixdown board and 1/4" stereo reel recording, or just not bothering to try to get high fidelity...)

My comments were based on this comment by Tom Parkins:



I was thinking of getting the 80 year old hogger to sit down in the depot and tell you how it was "back in the day". That should be easily doable with most camera gear. Sure, separate audio would be better in some cases. Fine, if you have it, set your fancy recorder on the table and also set your video equipped camera on a tripod to record the video portion. You can dub the sound in later if you're so inclined.

If you have a higher end camera, you may find that the audio is pretty good. I know folks are commenting on how the D800 has some really nice audio features, but to be honest I don't do video yet, so I'm not sure of the details.

But don't sit around waiting until you get the perfect gear and studio set up, lest you find that Old Man Jones marked up for the Heavenly Express last month while you were getting your ducks in a row..

As for audio of the trains themselves, yes, I agree, a steam whistle will over-modulate, or whatever the correct term is, most systems.

Are you referring to "people" as railfans who in general who just want to shoot video, or people who want both top-notch audio and video together? I can tell you that a lot of railfans don't have external kids, or money to go get mics with wind screens, etc. personally, I'm happy with the HD video and whatever sound I get. In the end, I want a quality video (with not a lot of wind noise)...now for those of you who are more of an "audiophile", that's all well and good. I'd love to record sounds of current trains and be able to donate them to those railroads to use on their own audio cd recordings. Problem is I don't have the finances to go get professional equipment like you suggest. Not everyone can get the top notch sound. To those of you that can, well I say "bravo".

Ok, I've said my piece. I'll go back into hiding now.

Two things that are easy and inexpensive and make a BIG difference:

Tripod (a really nice one can be had for $40 on Amazon-- I'll send you the link if you want; I have one and always keep it in the car)

and

a wind sock.

Back in the day (2102-759-610-4501, etc) plenty of guys simply used a big hunk of open-cell foam (like the stuff brass engine models were packed in) rubber-banded around the mic. There was one guy who'd toss his corded remote mic out into the grass a few feet ahead of the photo line facing the track--- it was inserted into an inverted, bottomless gallon plastic jug and had the foam surrounding the mic.

There's no need to make the viewer dizzy, or have to endure distorted loud audio. Really.

Howard P.

(not an audiophile and not a videographer, either)

I did a bunch of pro recordings of steam on digital in the 1980's, but the only thing we ever marketed was a recording of CPR #972 entitled Yesterdays Train - Today!

We had an early DAT machine and a full set of pro mics and baffles.

My partners in the project didn't see the worth in releasing more. We recorded #2102 on the main. #2317 on the Nicholson runs. #261 in the Poconos. A whole bunch of CR and CPR freights. The Allentown hump yard. And, my favorite, the sounds of Bethlehem Steel.

I have most of the masters, but no machine to edit with.

Rob

The largest problem with audio recording in the steam era is that truly "portable" audio recording equipment was not available to "amateur" enthusiasts until the late 1940s:

http://www.recording-history.org/HTML/wire1.php

Wire recording was embraced by a few enthusiasts out there, most notably John Prophet of Buffalo, who made many of the recordings of PRR, NYC, B&O, etc. steam later released by Semaphore Records.

Audio tape, a more robust and reliable system as long as cinders were kept out of the heads and rollers, came out just a few years later, and became portable enough to drag trackside in the early to mid-1950s--which means just as most steam was disappearing

The other problem is that making good audio is an entirely different exercise from making good video/film, which is why Hollywood, Bollywood, etc. to this day employ separate engineers for the task. The best sound usually comes from a different place and brain from the best photos/video.

The world emperor of railroad audio recording, hands down, was Peter Handford, a British cinema sound engineer who appropriated his studio's equipment on weekends:

http://www.transacord.co.uk/joomla/


I'm lucky enough to own large portions of Handford's releases, most in mint or near-mint condition. And once you've both read the jacket notes and heard the recordings, you basically forsake almost anything else, with the possible exception of O. Winston Link's Christmas Eve 1957 recording (sorry, Alan and Hal!).

This is the must-have book, written by Handford himself, if you're into this esoteric niche medium: http://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Railways-T ... 0715376314

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Handford

Audio interview (WARNING: British accents ahead!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5iWhJxlul0

Fortunately I agree with you there. A tripod makes a ton of difference (and I never railfan without it).