Les,
Thanks for your efforts in posting the sounds of 484 that day back in 1980. Sorry if I wrecked your trip from Indiana. Actually, the hooter didn't sound as bad as I remembered. I guess when you add in the non-square exhaust and the echo off the mountains it's not so bad.
I probably wrecked someone else's trip one winter day in Durango back around 1985 when, with the kind acquiescence of Steve Jackson, the shop foreman, I installed my first attempt at a chime whistle on the daily Cascade train. It was a four-chime disaster, of which, hopefully, no recordings survive. Another one-trip special.
Lest you think all my whistles were disasters, I did make one reasonably good one. It was a 3-chime, with the same chime lengths as Big Boy #4012. Again, with Steve Jackson's patient permission, I installed it on 478. It used a Lunkenheimer valve, which, because of the relatively high back pressure at the whistle base, tended to balance and want to stay open. I corrected for this by adding a Rube Goldberg screen door spring return on the linkage in the cab. As it turned out, Earl happened to show up on the maiden run (again, I believe, the only run), with tape recorder in hand. He later gave me a copy of the tape he made that day, which I still play occaisionally. I really liked the sound of that whistle, but, as Earl said, it didn't really fit in on the NG.
All these crystal clear pictures, and now the sounds. I feel myself getting sucked back into the NG vortex. As soon as someone figures out how to send the smell of coal smoke over the internet, I'm a goner.
Thanks again,
Mark
