"Crew Talk"

No, not for me.  I am very much a traditionalist and do not like it when my locomotives or cars "talk."  It is annoying. So I shut it all off in locomotives, passenger cars, etc. 

 

But I realize there are people who really like these features, and more power (and talk) to them!  If it adds to their enjoyment, fine.  Whether engineer-fireman dialog would help, I can't say, but why not?  Just make sure people like me can turn it off!

Well technically it's called crew talk and tower comm. Just depends on who initiates the conversation. 

 

That being said some crew interaction would be interesting. 

If it's a matter of memory space on the circuit card, I'd rather see additions to the list of standard whistle signals than crew talk.

One thing I'd like to see is some shortcuts to the forward and reverse whistle/horn signals, two and three short blasts.  MTH has that with DCS, but it's difficult to emulate that with Legacy.

Isn't part of the fun sounding the horns and whistles yourself?  That's why we have a quillable whistles and horns. 

I prefer to sound the horn and whistle myself.  If it comes down to limited memory, I would prefer dialog between the crew members with some of the fun terms I have read in Classic Trains magazine over a whistle script.

 

Doesn't sequence control offer scripts with whistle blasts?

 

Do MTH engines offer crew dialog, or is like Lionel's?

I'd like that too, and dialogue between crew members would add to the play/ evtertainment value for me and the occasional little kid who drives my trains, but what's the difficulty about implementing this in Legacy? If it's a system/memory limitation, what exactly does it result from?

 

Frankly I have never understood why 3Rail command control systems cannot or just don't    have the same sound capabilities as DCC. In the past I've commented on the great sound features of Lionel's HO Veranda produced some years back, which is still available in a Quantum Revolution sound board for HO. Is there any reason why that sound could not be duplicated in a Legacy engine?

 

P.S. In the Lionel Veranda the sound was also linked to the lighting features; if you started the turbine fire-up sequence the headlight and Mars light would go dim and not be switched back to normal operation until the sequence finished.

They al. Have some dialog. Mth has whistle sequences as well. 

There's nothing stopping you from sounding the horn yourself, you apparently don't get what I'm suggesting.  It's not possible with the Legacy controller to get two or three very short blasts with even spacing using the whistle control.  I'd like to be able to emulate that very prototypical sound, which I can't do with the Legacy controller at the present time.

I also prefer a whistle and horn scenario that I can completely control myself. As for crew and tower com talk, I enjoy that too although when endless reptition of the same sequence of phrases makes it boring, I do turn it off. To eliminate a degree of the repetitive boredom factor perhaps they could make the sequence of some phrases random. Also. albeit it'll never happen, I'd nevertheless enjoy being able to self-program passenger train stops from an online listing of audio files featuring various station stops.

Kenn 

Because the number of "bleeps" that would be necessary would make the dialog more annoying than it currently is.

I'm with Lee.  I don't like the crew talk or whatever you want to call it.  The talk I've heard wasn't very realistic anyway.  I don't use it.  But, to those that do like it that's ok.

 

I'd rather see more effort put into quality control and have engines work right out of the box rather than try to get more stuff into an engine like steam coming out of the whistle or cylinders.  What will you be asking for next?  How bout engineers waving to the passing rail buffs?

 

Rick

 

 

...because when a real steam locomotive passes by you can''t hear what the engineer and fireman are saying.

 

As I've stated on the legacy h7/y3 thread, at this point (soundwise) crewtalk should be the least of everyones concern.

I think on another thread - the one about Vision Line features - somebody suggested jut that, or maybe it was a moving conductor in a passenger car.

I've suggested both in the past.  I would love "crew animation" in Vision and Legacy locos.  Its about the only thing that would get me to buy another Big Boy (my JLC seems fine right now) or upgrade many of my locos - whistle steam, etc., just aren't enough incentive to replace the older technology in my mind. 

 

A engineer who operated the control as the train accelerated, waved, etc., a fireman who did what fireman do (shovel coal in older trains, operate controls in new ones), and a conductor that lowered the stairs and stepped down, would be cool!

 

 

In the Lionel PostWar Archives there is a steam loco with an animated engineer......so, the thought has crossed the minds of product development before. Peter

I tend to refer to it as "cab chatter," and even though probably 80% of my O gauge locomotives have the feature, it's not something I pay much attention to.  I don't make any real effort to turn it off; I just don't give it much attention.  In the real world, someone outside the locomotive would never hear any of these conversations, be they between on-board crew members or with a dispatcher in a remote tower.

Crew talk, cab chatter, I find any of it very annoying.  I'd prefer that the memory be used for a choice of horns on diesels, or the sound of the firebox door or feedwater pump on steamers.

All my locomotives have crew talk and other sounds I just adjust them to a lower volume or off. My favorite is the defect detector radio to train crew. That one is right on.

Apparently there are a sufficient number of buyers who like the crew talk feature or it would have been discontinued a long time ago. I for one enjoy it and so do the visitors to the layout. I put this in the same class as the Station Sounds feature which I particularly like.

I like the crew talk features and while I understand many want to seemingly want to lynch Lionel and MTH for having it I think it is fun along with those who visit. Not everyone likes smoke but again there are those of us who do. So I guess the anti-crew talk folks will be stopping by my place....just remember I have pictures of you

I feel the same way as Passenger Train Collector.  I know that many on the forum enjoy beating up Lionel for the windows on the 18" aluminum cars, but for me, the Station Sounds Diners add a great deal of play value, which makes the "flawed" cars appealing to me. For me, crew talk adds a similar level, of play value.  The SS Diners are bit more fun for me than crew talk.  But dialog between the engineer and fireman would raise the crew talk play value.

 

Yes, of course you would never hear the dialog between the crew members, but we all suspend our sense of reality when we play with trains.  You could not control the speed of a locomotive with a red knob or a transformer handle either.  We all play with trains with different levels of imagination and immersion in our fantasy train worlds.  To each their own.

 

Does anyone know how much memory is available on the sound board?  Does it really come down to realistic engine and whistle sounds or unique crew talk?  There is not enough memory for both?

I know that a majority of the folks that come to see the modular display would be very disappointed if there was no crew talk, especially the non-train people.  That alone would justify it in my mind. 

 

As far as stuff like the firebox door and the like, that would be neat, but you wouldn't hear that from outside the locomotive either.

 

I really like the station sounds passenger cars as well, to the point I went out of my way to create one.

I find much of the cab chatter to be too corny! A generic dialog sequence of chatter each keyed with one command would make me happy. Steam locomotives should not have radio chatter with a tower or  conductor.

 

For examples:

Brake Test Sequence: "Brake test! Brakes on! Releasing the brakes! (with appropriate whistle / horn sounds);

Departure Freight: "We have a highball signal!" (with appropriate whistle / horn and bell sounds);

Departure Passenger Train: "Highball! Departing for Atlantic City on Track 7, the Blue Comet!"

Passenger Train Arrival: "Arriving on track 3, Train Number XX from Chicago, the 20th Century Limited."

 

 

 

 

Bobby, you obviously like the MTH chatter better, it has much of that dialog.   I tend to agree with the comment about steam and the "tower" comm, that's not that realistic.

Hi John,

 

I no longer have any other brands of locomotives, so the MTH chatter is all I can remember. When it comes to cab chatter, I like keeping it simple with just a few phrases.

 

Has anyone talked to Rich Melvin about recording some real cab chatter and talk from the conductor while running the 765?

Lionel's scale 765 model from a couple of years back has Rich's voice as the engineer.

I am very sorry to see the demise of engine-specific CrewTalk.  I built and run an automated system, so it is great to hear the dialogues for go, slow, and stop from each engine when they receive a command.

 

I appreciate the arguments about fantasy, but we are usually engaged in some abstraction when we run our trains.  How many real-world engineers also have control of the turnouts on the mainline?

I'm with Lee, Rick, and John on this.  To me it sounds very stilted and phoney, read by actors trying to sound like tough train guys: standing next to each other in a recording studio but trying to sound like they are "yelling" to each other over engine noise that isn't there.  It's all a little embarassing.

 

I think my brother and I did a better rendition back in the early 50's, just two kids improvising. It's called imagination.

 

 

I hear it when I'm near a standing steam loco, which is what I was thinking of.  Also injectors, turbogenerator (link this to the headlight on/off), and blower.  I fired on a steam engine for a few years, and I miss hearing these things.

I enjoy pretty much all the various sounds and voices MTH and Lionel have to offer. I use them from time to time in different ways.

 

I am sure they will keep getting different and better with new releases down the road. 

 

I normally run Legacy and DCS at the same time so I have all the fun features available all the time. 

 

Scale-wise, you would not be able to hear crew talk from that far away. In fact, with all the train noise, you'd be lucky to hear it if you were IN the cab!

 

I would like to see the ability to record your own crew talk and chat, creating your own idea's and using the kids and/or other family members voices, as well as your own. 

Being able to record your own sounds, be it crew talk or additional locomotive sounds, would be a great feature!  Wouldn't it be cool to have a library at OGR with all the sounds various people come up with that you could load to personalize the locomotives?

I prefer the muffled crew talk Lionel had in the original TMCC engines because you could make it anything you wanted.  For example, a train running experience with my grandson might go like this:

 

Crew talk: muffled

 

Grandson: What'd he say?

 

Grandpa: He said he's approaching the station.

 

Crew talk: muffled

Grandson: What'd he say?

Grandpa: He said his brakes are hot.

 

This conversation would go on continually because no one really knew what the muffled comments were.

 

Earl

Radio conversations are going to be different than in-cabin talk. 

 

Lengthy conversations and more varied comments could be played not from the locomotive on the tracks, but from a simulation of a hand-held 2-way radio.

Andrew

I’m not a big fan, I usually shut it off. I think if you had realistic dialog between crew members, you wouldn’t want to activate it in the presents of woman and children.

You can do it with a Legacy loco and a Cab1.

quote:

But it is not really "crew" talk.

Exactly! It sounds like two idiots that don't know jack-sprat about railroading sitting in a room talking foam to one another!