November 1949 MR mag, "Sound - A New Challenge"

[on30gn15]

Sunday afternoon at our model RR club I had the impulse to pull out a binder of 1940s and 1950s Model Railroader magazines. There is something way, way, cool every 5th to 10th page.

November 1949 issue editorial on page 17, by John Page, "Sound - A New Challenge"
Used my camera to take a 'spy shot' of the page, and the last paragraph, to save it for my reference.

"Good railroad sound effects would be a fascinating auxiliary to any pike. If they are possible at moderate cost, the time may come when a "silent" pike will be as outdated and "flat" as the silent movie today. But if sound is worth having at all, it's worth doing right, and that's going to take suitable recordings and more "know-how" on the subject than we have at present.
Who has more ideas to keep the ball rolling?"

Interesting, development of the feature was being plotted over six decades back.

Also on page was commentary on standardizing couplers at that time and why it was not yet time in the history of coupler development to do so. Author was of a mind that universal acceptance by modelers of a future coupler was what should be the agency which set that eventual standard.

[Ken G Price]

I like the failing in this
Oh, and thnks fro the article excerpt. Must run trains

When all esle fials, go run trains
Screw the Rivets, I'm building for Atmosphere!
later, Forrest

[Ray Dunakin]

Very interesting!

I remember back in the late '70s, early '80s, people were adding simple "chuff" circuits to some of their steam locos. It was pretty crude, but better than nothing.

[ebtnut]

Yeah, I remember one guy who touted using a stereo phono cartridge and a metal nut mounted on the driver axle.  The cartridge was placed such that the needle just barely scraped the four corners of the nut, and the resulting noise amped to a speaker to give a synchronized "chuff".

[Trainman203]

They probably needed to do this to go along with the chuff-  

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_4by8CTnDm4

[James in FL]

But if sound is worth having at all, it's worth doing right, and that's going to take suitable recordings and more "know-how" on the subject than we have at present.

Perhaps it will come to fruition sometime in our life time.

Bad sound is not better than no sound.
The technology is not yet there to reproduce adequate sound in anything smaller than O Scale, and even there, it leaves something to be desired IMO.
Forget HO, and N is out of the question.

[Trainman203]

I don't think my Tsunami sound is bad at all.  Running without sound has to me become like running a corpse.  

It's a model, not a real train.  Compromises are everywhere.

[Country Joe]

Thanks for the excerpt from MR. Remember that Lionel had the whistle in most steam engines and I think they already had the diesel horn in the F3. Lionel also had a record with train sounds that could be played while running trains. American Flyer had the chuff sound but I don't know when they developed it. None of these were anything like the digital sounds we have today but they were a start.

I agree with Trainman203, running trains without sound is dull and lifeless.

I disagree James, IMHO sound in HO and N is quite good, and way better than silence.

[James in FL]

That you perceive that;

sound in HO and N is quite good

Good for you, enjoy it.

Thanks for the chuckle, I needed one today.

[jbrock27]

Not a fan of sound, yet, either.