clickety clack, tiddly pom,clickety clack

[mr magnolia]

Hi

 

n gauge set track gives a satisfying replication of much loved (if possibly ill-remembered!) clickety-clack noises and can create a 'rumble' that seems to me to fit well with my 1958 (drifting to 1963) layout.

 

Flexible track is a scale 140m or so for a complete length.

 

Does anyone do anything as daft as creating false joints by cutting just the top of the rails to give a tiddly pom?

 

or is it just daft because the tiddly pom is a noise heard within the train but not outwith?

 

ta

 

Donald

[tebee]

You don't get the regular tiddly pom if you are standing trackside, but you do get a less regular succession of clacks as the train passes.

 

I nicked the rails every 6 inches on my old 009 exhibition line which used almost all metal wheels and it did produce, to my ears anyway, a satisfying noise every time I ran a train in or out of the station. It was fairly subtle though , I'm not sure if any of the public ever noticed it.

 

 

Tom

[Bloodnok]

You don't get the regular tiddly pom if you are standing trackside, but you do get a less regular succession of clacks as the train passes.

 

True - but having driven trains on a layout with correctly dimensioned track panels, it certainly does encourage you to drive at the right speed - the ear works as a rather good speed measurement device

[Dr.Glum]

In the early days of laying track on my running track, I labouriously cut lengths of flexitrack into scale 60ft panels and laid them with a gap of about half a millimetre between rail ends, to see if I could get prototypical noises. I acheived a lot of clackety-clack, but it wasn't the clear clikety clack, tiddly pom, clickety clack that one might hope for. [Am I seriously typing stuff like this? I should get a life! However, moving on . . . ] It was even worse where there were adjoining points with their messed up clickety-clack noises. The more lengths I treated, the worse it got.

 

What I did find fairly satisfying was to have 'special' joints at intervals, where I left a generous gap in at least one rail joint. (In 00, about 2mm?) The limit is set by not wanting the stock to ahow too much wobble, and it should not be wide enough to cause pickup problems. (I tend to do the inside one on curves). You clearly hear regular clickety-clack clickety clack within the overall train 'roar'.

 

I run trains that are usually at least 10 carriages, so if these joints are at around 8 to 12 carriages apart, you still get the pleasure. It doesn't seem to matter when a train is not on such a joint and I havn't tried (on purpose anyway) to deal with the whole running line. However, I do have one near places where visitors sit and they seem to enjoy it and frequently comment on it.

 

It's a lot easier to try out for yourself than lots of scale length panels.

Cheers, Tony

[Etched Pixels]

Hi

 

n gauge set track gives a satisfying replication of much loved (if possibly ill-remembered!) clickety-clack noises and can create a 'rumble' that seems to me to fit well with my 1958 (drifting to 1963) layout.

 

Flexible track is a scale 140m or so for a complete length.

 

Does anyone do anything as daft as creating false joints by cutting just the top of the rails to give a tiddly pom?

 

or is it just daft because the tiddly pom is a noise heard within the train but not outwith?

 

ta

 

Donald

 

You don't need to lay in 124mm or so panels (although Kato track does come in the right lengths near enough !) as you can simply cut/file a groove into the rail every 60 scale feet. In N I find it a bit lacking for that sort of sound - you can kind of get it with metal wheels but its one thing that IMHO you need O or bigger to get right - along with fly shunting and buffer clangs. Physics doesn't scale ..

[mr magnolia]

well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that clickety clack tiddly pom is an important part of the modelling experience...

 

I like the idea of 'occasional' rather than 'scale' false joints - after all, watching trains going around (as per our layout - far from being an exhibition thing) is a long way from 'real' in any event, but I like the extra little bit of something that makes it feel more involving. I shall experiment!

[Colin_McLeod]

My 2 cent worth:

 

The "ocassional joint" sounds most realistic to me. If you are listening to the prototype lineside you are usually standing near to one joint, and you hear the train crossing that single joint. That is replicated in the model by the "ocassional joint" option. If you are actually in a train, you hear the clickty clack of the one coach you are in ( and prehaps the adjacent coach) so again the "ocassional joint" replicates that situation quite realistically.

 

If you listen to a prototype train from a distance (say half a mile) you do hear a more continuous noise of several wheels crossing several joints. This is the prototype equivalent of the overwhelming clicks that the OP was hearing.

 

Hope this helps

 

Colin

[mr magnolia]

our board is 1500x600, with a folded loop as the 'main line'

 

I've left 4 or 5 joints open a good bit - 2mm or so - (might help with thermal expansion if the summer ever comes...) dotted around both nearside and farsides of the loop. I think it works quite well to the ear as the train length obviously works its way over the joint, giving a series of clickety-clacks at each location. Coupled with the pointwork noises, I'm really quite happy!

[Penlan]

I was lucky to be able to run a 12 coach train on the late David Jenkinson's Dent Head Junct. layout after he sold it to late Keith Bannister. As the train came into the station at one end over a double slip (I think) there was a 'wide' rail joint, under which there was a 1/2" dia. hole. This hole acted as a sound magnifier and it was a great pleasure sitting back in one of the arm chairs in the railway room watching and listening to the long train drifting into/through the station, clickity, clickity, clack, clack, clack, clickity........

 

Penlan

 

PS - Sorry most of those I knew have passed on, there's a lot of 'the late... ' in my address book.

[Etched Pixels]

I'd never thought about drilling a hole and soundbox underneatth joins. What a fantastic discovery.