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Broadway Limited E-7; My Observations.

I had my first exposure to the new Broadway E-7 last Thursday night. The one I was exposed to was the CB&Q version.

I am glad that I didn't buy one. The front end looks "funny". There seems to be too much angle and slant to the windscreen, but that is not the part that I found most disappointing.

The "sound" is horrible. For starters, it is about 70 decibels too loud. The worst part, however, is that it doesn't sound remotely like an E-7. OK, maybe ~remotely~ like one. You have to flog your imagination and work it overtime to get there. It does sound like some kind of weird, hybrid thingie that is part normally aspirated EMD 567, part Alco 539T. It has traces of the salient thrumming EMD sound mixed in with the burble/chirp/chortle trademark sound of the turbo version of the 539. On the whole it sounds like some strange, heretofore unknown four-stroke-cycle prime mover. To make matters even worse, the E-7 is a dual-engined machine. The model is not. It has sounds of only a single prime mover.

I have been told that it is a recording of a unit that has been rebuilt with an EMD 645, and that what I am hearing is an EMD 645. Horsefeathers! This is the rankest, most overt kind of rationalization. It is no closer to the sound of a 645 than it is to the sound of the N&W

1218 with the airpumps running. It may never be possible to make a recording of an EMD E unit with the two 567s running, but a synthesized effort can get there and would, no doubt. be closer than the awful cacaphony emitted by the Broadaway offering.

In short, although it may be a bit late for that, I did not like the machine and would not get one other than as a collectable piece; and I don't collect. On a scale of one to ten, this guy gets a five from me.

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Captain Handbrake

Reply to
Captain Handbrake
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Captain,

You said, "For starters, it is about 70 decibels too loud."

All Broadway engines come from the factory with the sound turned up. The master volume can be turned down and with the C-16 they supply a plastic, small, screw driver for that purpose.

Bob Rule, Jr. Hatboro, Pa.

Reply to
EBTBOB

Thank you. I am sure that if I'd actually been the owner I'd have known that. However, for me, the point is moot as I have no intention of getting one. I'm not all that fond of sound even when it is superb, which this thing is most certainly not.

Captain Handbrake

Reply to
Captain Handbrake

Captain,

You are not alone in your feelings about sound as I am sure you know. Over the past few months the issue of sound in engines and whether it would be better for a manufacturer to offer an engine with or without sound has been discussed in several forums including this one. By your original comments, it is quite obvious that you are very well educated in what different engines sound like, in the E units. For me, I do not have that knowledge but have heard the E unit from Broadway and thought it sounded good enough that I will be adding one of their SW7s to my roster when they become available. Now, I know enough about the Alco sound that if Broadway did an Alco with the wrong sound I would NOT buy one. All in all, for those of us who enjoy sound and do not know exactly what an E unit sounds like, I feel the Broadway piece is worth the price. You presented a very valid opinion and I respect that you did so.

Bob Rule, Jr. Hatboro, Pa.

Reply to
EBTBOB

Yes, I suppose each of us is a rivet-counter in his own way. Mine is the area of sound. I don't mind quite so much if the radiator screen is the wrong mesh, but let the sound be "wrong" and I get torqued. Oh well...........enjoy

Captain Handbrake

Reply to
Captain Handbrake

I am not a "sound" rivet counter, so I cannot tell you if this is a 567 (1) (a) with double vebelfetzers and chrome mudflaps. I know its not a Baldwin, so it sounds OK to me. We did have one customer in the store that said it "didn't sound right" because he could hear only one prime mover! He is in a group of diesel restorers at some museum. He thought it sounded pretty good.

Regardin the volume. There is an onboard volume control. We turned it down a bit for demo purposes because we didn't want to run evereyone out of the shop.

The nose contour and windows could be better, but thay are far from poor. The paint work on the C&O units isn't great. The blue is too light and the treatment on the top of the nose isn't quite right.

The Mars light is outstanding! They managed to get the double pulse look to it. The horn is also excellent, as is the bell which doesn't just stop when you turn ot off, it does down.

All of this can be operated from a conventional power pack using the existing controls, and if you have DCC the decoder is smart enough to detect the DCC signals without a lot of fussy programming.

On a scale of 1 to 10. Not a ten but well above nine.

John Glaab Peach Creek Shops

Reply to
PEACHCREEK

What a BLI engine sounds like or will sound like is very easy to find out. If they currently make it or it's close to production the sound is on their site. If it's a future engine most likely the sound will be available on the QSI site. You mentioned an ALCO and the site has early and late ALCO. Play them and report back.

Reply to
Jon Miller

OK, here is the report. I can't hear what the locomotive sounds like because all I can hear is the horn and bell. Every railroad had a different horn and sometimes locomotives on the same railroad had different horns. So then, the horn and bell are meaningless when you are trying to hear if the thing sounds like an Alco or a F-M. FWIW, F-Ms and EMDs sounded a lot alike. The F-Ms however had a more "urgent" quality to them than did the EMDs. F-Ms could spool-up very rapidly, much more so than EMDs, which in their turn could spool-up more rapidly than any of the four-stroke-cycle guys.

The information on the QSI web page is almost useless. I say almost, because I can hear a few microseconds of engine sound at the end of each soundbyte. The "F-M" and the "Early Alco" hold promise, but before I can make any kind of valid decision I need to hear them go through their paces without the horn and bell.

The 567, 645, 8-1/8 X 10, 539, 244/251, VO/de la Vergne and Cooper-Bessemer engines all had distinctive audio signatures in both normally aspirated and turbocharged versions. While you might not be able to distinguish between a turbo 16- 567 and a

16- 645, there is no way to mistake the 12cyl 8-1/8 X 10 for the 12-251. There is no way to mistake an inline 8-cylinder Superior engine for anything, except maybe a pair of quad 40mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft batteries. As far as I know, only one of those ever made it into a locomotive application.

You must also take into account that, when it comes to sound, I am firmly in the camp of the anal-retentive rivet counters. If you are a person for whom "more or less" is good enough, then you may well be happy with a sound board that sounds something like a diesel locomotive. All of them do manage to do that.

Captain Handbrake

Reply to
Captain Handbrake

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