WHAT TUNES DO YOU JAM TO WHEN RUNNING TRAINS?

Three pages of comments and no one's mentioned Johnny Cash yet?? Ray LaMontagne's another good one, new but an old soul.  But last weekend it was re-runs of NPR's Car Talk.  Maybe mixing genres, but worked for me!

Ah, well, I take care of that at the shop (LHS)!! 

We have a tri-level (HO,O,G) display layout that I built.  The HO scenery features a bandstand under which I placed a speaker.  I have a portable CD player that I plug into the fascia to play band music.  Ellington's classic is on one of several Swing Era CD's I have (The scenery/vehicles/trains/etc. are 30's-40's-ish).  Of course, it's no surprise that the older store patrons enjoy the music more than the millenials.  Anyhow, it's a lot of fun...improves the ambiance.  Seasonally, we'll play Manneheim's classic Christmas albums among others...not very believable for the band size/instruments on the layout...but, hey, everyone 'digs' it! 

We especially have a lot of fun playing Alvin and the Chipmunks albums....we tell the kids 'That's actually the HO people in the park around the bandstand singing!', ...they stare believingly in utter wonderment!!

It's all good!

KD

Not a thing.  I listen to music all week (for work)  and go downstairs to the layout to enjoy the quiet and zone out about what the task is for the day on they layout.. 

What are your favorite groups?

50's, 60's and country from the 90's. Generally, Elvis, Motown, the Beatles, the Stones, Shania, Alan Jackson, Chuck Berry, Patsy Cline, the Doors, so forth and maybe even so on.

Gerry

Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley  

And what about a little Chubby Checker?

I'm slightly surprised that no one listens to actual hobo music, the songs of Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston (real-life hobos), or the "singing brakeman" Jimmy Rodgers ("All Around The Water Tank" - a true classic!)

Don't know of any 100,000 watt sound systems in hobo camps to make that heavy metal noise.  I do, however, admit to occasionally listening to "Tuxedo Junction" by Erskine Hawkins and performed by Glenn Miller because it is the namesake of my layout.  Also don't know of any big bands in hobo camps.

Pete

ps - The best doo wop group is The Jive Five; the best song "My True Story."

A little Chubby Checker was called Ernest Evans.

And a really good Chubby Checker was called Fats Domino.

Gerry

What could be more like heavy metal music then a fright train thundering along at its top speed?

IM with choo choo barn,,  heavy metal,  Pink Floyd. loud,  with a good scotch !!! 

when I'm running trains, it's a lot of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, Jackie Gleason &  Stan Getz.  I also play 50's Doo Wop as well. I feel it goes w/ the postwar trains I run & helps create my version of a time machine. Plus Sinatra is just awesome  

I usually listen to this type of thing as it adds to the atmosphere.

http://www.railroadradio.net/

http://www.alabamarailfan.com/live-scanner.php

Interesting thread.  I remember in high school listening to the Pittsburgh top 40 station while working on my HO layout.  That was the early '70s.  After college, I worked in Richmond Virginia for a while and started listening to country.  Then I listened to oldies, 50's to early '70s.  Later, I realized I liked older Southern Rock.  Now I don't listen to much of anything, except my wife's piano and when our music student youngest daughter is home I hear her opera and whatever classics she is practicing.

If they aren't playing or singing, I just listen to the trains singing on the rails.

My non-electronic trains make their own music: steel wheels pounding on steel rails, clattering on switches and rail joints. My fast, lightweight battery-power transit car with steel wheels actually makes the rails "sing" at high speed.

If I wanted to add other music occasionally it might be Aerosmith "Train kept a-rolling all night long".

I use Fastrack. Who can hear anything except the trains on that? Now, with my new layout and utilizing all of the best track noise deadening tricks I can I'll figure out some music! I do have a collection of appropriate train folk songs....

"Railroad Bill, Railroad Bill, he never worked and he never will!"

WOW I'm surrounded by oldtimers.....Guess im the whipersnaper and old ball young blood... I jam out to christian metal/alternative music..this one of my favorite band.but do listen to some 70 stuff like montrose.,boston..

Moody Blues

The sound of Frankie Valli and the 4 seasons always takes me back to my youth and model trains.  My annual Christmas HO layout was always set up in our dinning room and at some point our family bought one of those new "Stereos" and it was placed right next to my layout. I played my Four Seasons album over and over as my Tyco and Fleishman trains ran around Plasticville for hours at a time. Add the smell of dyed lychen and I think I'm gonna ' cry.

Conductor Earl

yardlet6,

I saw your question to Sail Loco pertaining to favorite Doo Wop groups.

These are a few of my favorites.

The Skyliner's
The Flamingo's
The Dubs
The Innocents
Johnny and Jo
Robert and Johnny
The Duprees
The Demensions
The Metallics
The Jive Five
The Capris
The Fiestas
The Jaguars
The Rays
The Students
Ronnie and The Hi-Lites
Rochelle and The Candles
Don and Juan

Two of my favorite girl groups during this time were The Paris Sisters and The Angels.

I sometimes have doowops playing but I usually have the radio on. WBLS.

My favorite groups are:

The Ravens

The Five Keys

Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers

The Diablos

The Moonglows

The Flamingos

Clyde Mc Phatter and the Drifters

The Dominos

The Valentines

The Clovers

and other I am too lazy to put down.

Which Students group do you like? The Philly group or the Cincinnati one. Also check out "Thinking Of You" by the Jaguars.

The question didn't ask what we drink. A good scotch always goes down well before using machinery!  LOL.  But it does quite the nerves a bit prior to working for 4 or 5 hours.

The Jive Five, What Time Is It?  One of my favorite songs from that era.  We saw them at the Valley Forge Music Fair (now defunct) at an oldies concert hosted by non-other than Jerry Blavat about 35 years ago.  Anybody out there remember The Geator?  Plus, can never get enough of Billy Stewart.

Blavat has put out an autobiography. Check it out.

yardlet6,

The group named Students that I was referring to were from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello everyone.  I have to say theirs nothing like some  ALICE COOPER.  I can play just about anything from this guy and I really enjoy it.

I love Gleason's Mood Music. I have a ton of it on Vinyl  & have been able to find some of it on CD too

Now IF I was running Baldwin Centipedes (which, Praise the Father, I don't have!)  ...I'd have to put on Alice Cooper - Ballad of David Frey !    

Stanley Newcomb Kenton, Stan the Man.

MAN will this thread ever die? Just checked my email and ohh my gouge, Thank  Begeesus, I taint thee only one who listens too obscure tunes, but I don't check it too often and man this thing was full. I think the music thing freaks out some of thee more established folks though. SUUUPER glad too sea the world keeps turning. At least Im not the only one.  an you doo whop guys what about Clarence Frogmouth ?..., whats his last name ? 

Whatever is coming out of my Mr.Christmas carousel in the "amusement park area".

Clarence Frogman Henry

Me and my band with Jerry in 1967 following a personal appearance at a Philly area school the day after we lip-synched our record on his TV show.

I'm the cutie with the eye patch due to an injury, not a gimmick.  Lotta lifetimes ago.

Pete