RickO posted:Duncan H W Foster posted:Can you let us know if the other sounds like the steam whistle are the same. My Challenger has the same sounds as the Big Boy and I like the effect.
It should sound like the bigboy.
FWIW, the real UP Challengers, Bigboys ,and FEF Northerns, all use the same Hancock 3 chime whistle.
That is correct. Follow this link for a discussion of UP's usage of the Hancock Long-Bell 3-Chime whistle on all 175 of their "big" engines.
I want to draw everyone's attention to this paragraph from the article: "One of the interesting elements of steam whistles is the degree to which the sound produced can vary, even when of the same design and construction. These tracks illustrate Hancock long-bell whistles operating properly and some performing very poorly. Refer to the captions for related data."
I keep coming across erroneous comments on railfan sites about whistles on different locomotives and how they are not a "Daylight" whistle or a "Class J" whistle etc. 4449 currently carries a whistle from an SP GS class locomotive. Since it is the flat-top version, it is pre-1938 which means it was on a GS-2 or GS-3. The 1941 GS-4s used the post-1938 step top type. In the past, 4449 carried whistles from a NP Challenger and SP&S 700. Though they may have differences in tone, all three are Hancock Long-Bell 3-Chime whistles. (Note: it is said that the flat-top had a more mellow tone than the later step-top, although they sounded the same tones, equivalent to musical notes A-C-E, an A-minor triad chord.) Same goes for the current whistle on 611, purportedly from a UP 4000 class and the whistle she used in the '80s and '90s which came from N&W 600.
