What is a growler?

 A postwar F-3 Diesel.

Pretty much anything with an AC motor pre or post war. 

It is a postwar F3 diesel with the horizontal worm drive motor such as the 2333 or 2343, first produced in 1948. It was phased out for the vertical motor around 1955 (generally concurrent with the introduction of disc couplers, the GP7/9 and the FM Trainmaster).

A growler is a container, usually glass, that holds 4 pints (64oz) of beer. 

In O gauge terms it usually refers to Lionel AC open frame motors built from Lionel's beginning through about 2015. It most commonly refers to Lionel F3s made from 1948-1956 with horizontal motors. They made a distinctive growling sound in operation. 

2343, this video doesn't really capture the sound though.

Any locomotive that sounds like you’re grinding coffee to a pulp, rather than running a locomotive.....

Pat

Should be able to hear the motors in my ABBA 2343 set. It's got an ERR AC Commander and Railsounds, so it’ll run pretty slow/smoothly. 

And generally one of the smoothest, slowest, best-running 3-rail locos made before 1987 

Postwar Lionel Vulcan switchers are some of the worst growlers. I have a couple and they are very loud.

During the transition period from Steam to Diesel railroaders often used the term in reference to Diesel-electric locomotives.

@Überstationmeister posted:

It is a postwar F3 diesel with the horizontal worm drive motor such as the 2333 or 2343, first produced in 1948. It was phased out for the vertical motor around 1955 (generally concurrent with the introduction of disc couplers, the GP7/9 and the FM Trainmaster).

@Überstationmeister has it right - the horizontal motors in the first editions of the F3s. Not all open frame AC pulmors are growlers, even if they make a racket such as the motorized units like the small vulcan switchers (#41 etc). Unfortunately, the definition is slipping and loosing it's specificity as more and more people are loosing an intimate experience with the golden age of Lionel and associate the pulmors with negativity and growler becomes used as a pejorative.

Here's the first issue Lionel F3 2333 these run very smooth with the growl. The little 51 Navy switcher growls also but with more grind.

Actually, some of the loudest little AC motors are found in the stuff like the Vulcan switchers, the firecars, and the gang car.  All of those are typically very loud for their size.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Actually, some of the loudest little AC motors are found in the stuff like the Vulcan switchers, the firecars, and the gang car.  All of those are typically very loud for their size.

Back in the late ‘50’s or early ‘60’s I bought a switcher that was impressively loud. I wonder if it was Vulcan switcher. Does anyone have a picture of one, so I might know for sure? I think mine was blue, but that was quite a few years in my past.

@TM Terry, see @franktrain's post above. He shows a blue #51 switcher. However, as stated further up, while these little things make quite a racket they are not identified as growlers.

I suspect it was the Nave #51, see this page: LIONEL NAVY YARD GAS VULCAN UNIT No. 51

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

I suspect it was the Nave #51, see this page: LIONEL NAVY YARD GAS VULCAN UNIT No. 51

My memory is too foggy to know certainly, but that could have very well been the switcher. I do know I bought it as a separate locomotive. 

On Christmas 1953 (or ‘54) I got a Santa Fe F3 (ABA) which seemed fairly loud, but when I got the switcher it seemed a fair amount louder.

To concur with GRJ, I remember talking to a guy years ago who did a lot of Lionel repairs, and he opined that the small Lionel motorized units were about the loudest things Lionel ever made. I had a postwar US Army Vulcan in to him for repairs, and it sounded like a tractor with a bad muffler pulling a piece of corregated steel on rough asphalt. He said that was normal. 

I picked up a Lionel Navy Yard Gas Vulcan Unit #51 several months ago at one of the last 2019 train meets I attended.  It sounds just like an industrial-sized coffee grinder with bad, rusty bearings (or what I imagine one would sound like, anyway).  And WITH the industrial volume output to match!

And that was AFTER a good tear down, inspection, cleaning, oiling, greasing, and reassembly! 

I'm thinking that an original, F3 2333 growler would HAVE to be music to my ears compared to the finger-nails-on-the-chalkboard Vulcan!  

I didn't see it mentioned above, but in my prototypical RR reading I have often run across "growler" applied to real diesel locos in the Transition period - 1950 - 1960, roughly; this, to contrast them with steam locos. The term shows up primarily in RR literature written in or around that period.

The early HO Varney F3s also made a growling sounds due to the motor attached to the top of the truck with a gear on the shaft of the motor and one on the rear of the truck.  A friend called them "Cabbage Cutters".

More than half of the responses were deleted in this thread from the same members that always have to break the rules and post off topic responses.  Kind of a habit of theirs.  This is how a topic gets either totally deleted or closed.  The new software and mods track the habitual offenders so don't complain when your account gets closed.