ringtone

THE BEST THERE IS

Nickel Plate 765.

Yesterday (Friday, September 28, 2007) I had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to think I could install the whistle of steam railroad locomotive 765 as the ringtone on my cellphone.
Steam railroad locomotive 765 is a restored retired steam-locomotive of the Nickel Plate Road between Buffalo and Chicago and St. Louis (the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad), named Nickel Plate by a scion of the mighty New York Central Railroad because it provided such staunch competition.
765 is a Nickel Plate Berkshire, 2-8-4, a special design common to many other railroads. The concept, called SuperPower, was initiated by Lima (“LIE-ma;” not “LEE-ma — like the lima-bean) Locomotive Works of Lima, Ohio.
The concept was to build enough steam boiler-capacity into the regular side-rod design, to supply sufficient steam to allow constant 50-70 mph running, and not run out of steam.
SuperPower was such a success many railroads bought it; 2-8-4 and 2-10-4 iterations thereof. (In fact, a 2-6-6-6 articulated SuperPower engine was also built for Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad).
But for most railroads it was a misapplication, since many railroads were lugging heavy trains up steep mountain grades.
SuperPower was efficient too, but not as efficient at slow speeds as steam-locomotives designed for slow lugging (Norfolk & Western was good at this).
Where SuperPower shined was 50-70 mph running over flat terrain.
Years ago (early ‘90s) I rode the Chesapeake & Ohio mainline behind 765 up the New River Gorge in W. Va.
Whoo-wheee! I will never forget it as long as I live! Constant 60-70 mph! They had given us the railroad.
765 steamed like no steam-locomotive I had ever seen.
What I saw as a child were Pennsy K4s on the PRSL, but they weren’t as strong as 765.
We passed a stopped coal-train in a siding. Three hoppers were flipping by every second!
Me and another guy, covered in soot, timed our train with our stop-watches. 70 mph between mileposts!

Nickel Plate 765 masquerading as Chessie Kanawha #2765.

They’d been running the New River Train over-and-over every Fall, so I chased it the following year with my wife.
The next year (1993) I convinced my blowhard, macho brother-from-Boston he should come out and see it.
He was supervising construction of a generating-station (or something) in Illinois, and planned to drive home to his home near Boston. He would do so via West Virginia.
765 had been modified to look like a Chesapeake & Ohio Kanawha, also a SuperPower design, but not built by Lima, and slightly different from a Nickel Plate Berk.
C&O had the steam dome and sandbox atop the boiler reversed from the standard Lima practice.
The C&O Kanawha and Nickel Plate Berk also had different pilots.
What little modification the 765 guys did to make 765 look like a Kanawha was to lower the headlight off of the smokebox door, and put a 2765 number-plate in its place; just like a Kanawha.
The 765 guys also built a front panel that fronted the air-pumps and an intercooler on the Kanawha. But it doesn’t cover anything. The air-pumps are where they were on 765.
WHATEVER; it’s still Nickel Plate 765. They also put a C&O hooter whistle on it, but it still has the 765 whistle — BAR NONE the prettiest-sounding steam-whistle in existence. There are steam-whistles on the Shay-locomotives at Cass worth hearing, but they ain’t 765.
So I dragged out my VHS videotape that I recorded when my brother and I chased 2765 back in 1993.
I stuck my cellphone up against the TV speaker, and recorded 2765 whistling for a grade-crossing.
It was awful — it’s only a cellphone.
So I plugged in my USB microphone and recorded the same sound on my ‘pyooter. Not a direct feed, but much better — I’ve done that before.
So good I decided to upload the sound-file to our famblee-site; which is when the madness began.
First I uploaded my MAC System-7 file, which Gates-users can’t play. Loud fulminating from West Bridgewater.
But I have a software for converting System-7s to .wav-files, playable by Gates users. I also have Windoze Media-Player on my MAC, so it plays a .wav-file (as does my QuickTime).
I converted the System-7 to .wav, played it, and got deafening silence from West Bridgewater.
My wife was playing the .wav on her PC, as was my baby-sister, apparently.
Then after about three plays I began getting a plugin requirement. WHAT? I’ve been playing it right along.
We looked at things, and apparently MyFamblee was adding something to the embed-address that made the file unreadable.
A plugin for such gibberish didn’t exist, so I dumped the first embed and embedded again. Now it plays; and still does — about 12 hours since uploading.
Meanwhile, making it a ringtone may be impossible. I can put it on the cellphone flashcard, but it ain’t the format the cellphone wants.
Okay, so we convert it online to a ringtone format, but “Version” seems to want ya to do everything through them, so they can charge a fee. I.e. I guess a ringtone has to come from “Version;” not the chip (REPUBLICAN ALERT)!

The “Nickel Plate Road” no longer exists. It was bought by Norfolk & Western, and is now operated by Norfolk Southern.

“2-8-4” equals two pilot wheels (one each side), eight driving wheels (four each side), and four trailing-wheels supporting the firebox (two each side). It’s the Whyte numbering system for detailing railroad steam locomotives.

RE: “regular side-rod design.......” Most railroad steam locomotives used forged side-rods worked by pistons to turn the driving-wheels. There were other ways of driving the driving-wheels of a railroad steam locomotive (e.g. the Shay), but they were very rarely used. (Most Shays operated on logging railroads, since they could operate on minimal track with steep grades.)

“Articulated” is a railroad steam locomotive with two or more driver-sets; usually with the lead driver-set on a hinge so the locomotive could negotiate sharp turns (hence the name “articulated”). The usual maximum was two driver-sets, although Erie had a locomotive with three.

“Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that went bankrupt in about two years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world. The K4 Pacific (4-6-2) was their primary steam passenger-engine. As a late ‘teens design, it is rather moribund, but very impressive. A lot of boiler for its time.

“PRSL” (Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines) is an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading (“RED-ing”) railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much track. It was promulgated in 1933. The PRSL ran through the little town south of where I lived as a child. On it is was where I first saw trains; and PRSL still ran steam at that time (late ‘40s).

“Hoppers” are coal-cars (hopper-cars).

“C&O” is the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. It no longer exists. CSX operates it, and many other railroads.

“My all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston” noisily badmouths everything I do or say. Like me he’s also a railfan.

“The air-pumps” supply air for the train’s brake-system, among other things.

“A C&O hooter whistle” is a single low tone, the standard steam-whistle C&O used. It’s rather putrid.

“Our famblee-site” (FlagOut) is our family’s web-site, named that because I had a mentally-retarded kid-brother (Down Syndrome) who lived at home, and loudly insisted the flag be flown every day. “Flag-Out! Sun comes up, the flag goes up! Sun goes down, the flag comes down.” I fly the flag partly in his honor. (He died at 14 in 1968.) “MyFamblee” (MyFamily) is the service that maintains our web-site.

“West Bridgewater,” south of Boston, is where my loudmouthed brother lives.

“My baby-sister” is Peg, 17 years younger than me — I’m the oldest. She lives near Lynchburg, Va. with her husband and children,

“Version” is how my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston noisily insists “Verizon” is spelled.