First of all I'll separate myself from the story below as I don't share the same interest in trains as my old man
.
Anyway, my Dad has always been fascinated by trains, especially the old American Steam Trains and after one trip to America arrived home expecting three items he'd bought to follow by freight.
A bell, stream whistle and air horn from an actual locomotion which was being decommissioned. Now, these things weigh a frigging tonne, I daren't imagine how much they cost to ship over. When he collected the bell in particular from the airport he owned a Mondeo estate; when the forklift inserted the bell (still in its wooden box) and lowered it, his car just sunk right down, how it managed to drive it home is anyones guess. The clever out there are probably wondering how he got it out of the car at home without the use of a forklift?? This question stumped him for a while as he'd not thought about that. He ended up breaking up the wooden box whilst still inside the car which freed us just enough weight for a few men to pull it out
. These are all now pride of place in his office at home.
The reason for telling you this is because the air horn, probably similar to what is being used in this clip, are designed to be heard from something like 10 miles away (due to the stopping speed of the trains - Christ now I sound like the expert!!). My Dad wanted to get the horn working to see how loud it was but couldn't ever get enough air-pressure to sound the horn. Turns out our neighbour had such a contraption to get it working so one day trollied the horn round there.
I can honestly understand how the sound knocked people over in that clip. It's too hard to describe the sound that comes out of these horns, literally staggering, how we all regained our hearing again is frankly astonishing.
Thankfully he cannot find a way to get enough pressure behind the steam whistle as imagine the sound of a horn but at a higher ear-piercing level. Window shattering stuff.
The bell deafens us on each visit as the Grandchildren find great pleasure in ringing that at every opportunity.
His stuff looks something like this (for those interested
) but think his horn is a triple version...