Lionel Rail Sounds 5.0 and the quilling whistle effect

Quillable whistles are with Legacy only.  RS5 had multi-tone whistles but could not truly be "quilled".

Most "pre legacy" Lionel locos have a variable whistle(3 tones)  based on locomotive speed. and/or length of time you hold down the button. I.E. when the loco is parked a quick press and release yields a short "toot", when highballing, holding the button down longer yields a more powerful "crossing" type blast(s) which will usually vary with each press and mimmick the long, long, short, long, that is typical at a crossing.Not the same as a legacy quillable but IMO a very close second. 

All RS uses sound "snippets" to assemble the whistle/horn on the fly.  The difference between 2.5 through 4, 5, and Legacy are the number/amount of snippets  (RS 5) and the ability to control the assembly (Legacy).

This is almost on the subject, and has been mentioned before - by me, at least -
but not all modern real steam whistles were "quillable". Some were operated
pneumatically(or steam-ically? - new word) by a cylinder at the whistle, which was activated in the cab by a valve opened by some means - like a rope or lever. The whistle could, of course, be made to blow all the needed patterns, but it was an on-or-off
device, and could not be "played." I believe that the modern NYC steamers were like
this, and I suppose others.

So if I'm correct in all this, our non-quillable whistles may be far more prototypical than
the fancy-schmancy Legacy items, depending upon the prototype. Me, I like the "blat"
air horn on the SP GS and AC classes (at least the AC-9 Limas), and the NYC 6000's (Niagaras), and others, I guess.
So unexpected.

"fancy-schmancy" prototype