Accurate Diesel & Steam Sounds?

I believe the S3 sounds are from a recent recording of the actual engine in excursion service. I don't know about the diesels. You might want to try asking Lionel. 

can't speak about steam,but lionel seems to use a stock EMD 567 diesel sound for all the f series diesels.the sound is very accurate i live on the New Haven line and have heard FL-9s for years and the sound is spot on...hope this helps...joe

My biggest problem is I have little idea how almost all of the real locos sounded.  I've heard F3s, etc., and various modern locos but I don't remember big differences. 

Similarly, I'm aware that articulated four cylinder steam should sound different than three cylinder should be different than two cylinder, and that compound is a bit different than not - but again . . . 

So what I like is "sound that that just sounds good." A good example is the Lionel U30C.  It sounds  like a big diesel, yes, and the sound accelerates as the train does, etc., but it impresses because I can hear valve clatter or something, and a lot of complexity in other machine sounds, at idle, wow!.  Similarly, some of the Lionel Legacy steamers have very dynamic sound, both low bass in the heavy chuffing and some high notes mixed in the hiss, etc., with good squeaky brake sounds.  

As to what I tell guests: I figure they know less than me, so - I tell them is authentic, of course!  

Thanks to everyone who replied. Lee, I think you hit the nail on the head. If it sounds good, who cares! The two examples I used, F-7's and S3 Northerns sound so great that I don't care if they are authentic or not.

The sound of a Legacy operated Legacy engine is what got me really hooked and back into the hobby. I also enjoy the DCS engine sounds but I much prefer the Legacy sounds.

The Legacy sound and the control of it on the remote also got me away from conventional running. I still like running conventional on occassion but when it's time for the big show it's Legacy all the way...

I too think that Legacy sound is amazing. As Lee has mentioned, if you sit and listen to any Legacy engine running, you hear all sorts of little mechanical noises appearing at random times. I'd swear that my RS-11 has a misfire on one cylinder at times when it's idling. All of this is on top of the absolutely awesome primary sound set. Hearing the turbine howl of the GP-35, the throaty burble of the RS-11 or the rumbling power of an F series locomotive is enough to get the blood flowing on the coldest of days. I don't have any Legacy steam locomotives as of yet, but I'm sure that I would wax lyrical over those too.

Paul:  I agree that the whistle sound of the S-3 was made from actual recordings of the #261 when it was still in service.  (Incidentally, the restoration is now virtually complete and, after a few active tests, the engine should be back in service early in 2013.  Understand that the first excursion is from Minneapolis  up to Duluth, MN.)

The Milwaukee Road, however, used a single note air horn on their first and second generation diesels.  Believe it was called a Westinghouse Typhoon, or something like that.  So the sound is a rather nasal "honk" tone, not the tuned horns of later installations.  That sound has been correctly duplicated on most of the F's, E's, FM's and others that I have heard.  The actual sound gets kind of monotonous when you blow the horn a lot.

Paul Fischer

The horn on the Hiawathas was a single-chime Leslie Tyfon. You can find recordings of that type of horn online by Googling the name. I don't know if the horn on the Northerns was the same but it would seem to be a good assumption. All the locomotives with horns also had whistles, as far as I know. The general practice was to use the air horn for crossing alerts, because the sound carries better under various conditions, but the whistles were used for signaling in the yard. I have a video somewhere of a Hiawatha 4-4-2 in the yard and it is blowing the whistle to signal backing up, etc. 

When Lionel came out with their 4-4-2 Hiawatha, there was a lot of bellyaching from the uninformed about the fact that it had a horn rather than a whistle. Unfortunately, following their usual tradition of getting things almost right, Lionel used a dual-chime sound rather than the correct single chime. Lionel also saved a few bucks by not having both a horn and a whistle, although a board with that feature had already been developed for the Daylight. 

If you have both a horn and a whistle, how do you trigger them?

There's a button sequence that toggles between the various sounds. The Lionel Milwaukee Road S3 has two whistles and a horn. I forget how it goes, but there's some sequence of buttons on the remote that switches the sound. You can do it with a CAB-1; you don't need Legacy to use the horn/whistle options. 

The sound is spot on for both, the sound came from prototypes that recently or still operate. Lionel does this whenever possible. Locomotives that no longer operate or exist get an approximate diesel rev or chuff and a sample of a whistle or horn, these either still exist or there are available reproductions, like this New York Central 5 chime, Hudson anyone........?

 I believe the f7 sounds are taken from this prototype.

The s3 sounds came from the real thing as southwest hiawatha mentioned.Heres one whistle and the air horn on the s3

Heres the other whistle