Price: € 7,50 plus shipping
Visit www.railmedia.com to order.
Around 1996 I had the idea of making sound recordings especially of ALCo engines. I went to a local HiFi dealer and came home with an Aiwa JS145 Stereo Cassette Recorder. It featured a separate stereo (well, sort of stereo) microphone. First trials in Portugal in 1996 weren't encouraging. After Aiwa admitted that the recorder can't record properly on chrome tapes I was more successful in Greece in summer 1997 where I filled three ferro tapes. Nevertheless the need for a better recorder was urgent after that trip and a DAT deck was acquired a couple of months later.
Regardless of the basic recording equipment I took the time to take care of those treasures and remastered them to mono as the stereo channels weren't stable. The result were 75 minutes excellent thrash which ran on continous on my system for quite a while... Some of the material is presented here as mp3-files. To download a small freeware mp3-player for Win9x click here (119 k). The player is compressed using the zip format. File size in brackets.
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The whole set of 59 recordings is now available on CD. Running time
over 73 minutes. Basic captions are given. Price: € 7,50 plus shipping Visit www.railmedia.com to order. |
On the train
A-324
(ALCo DL543) with 1630 to Serres departing Rodopoli (935 kB, 58 sec,
mono)
A-324 departs Rodopoli, the train has only two coaches (DMU replacement
run) and gains speed very quickly.
A-454 (MLW MX627) with
502 to Thessaloniki departing Karia (1.4 MB, 1:26 min, mono)
After waiting due to a red signal at Karia, A-454 has to accelerate the
heavy express train 502 in the grade. You hear crickets around which are
soon covered by the sound and diesel exhaust of the hard working engine.
The passage of a tunnel compresses the sound tremendously.
A-506 (MLW MX636) with 613 to Thessaloniki
departing Komotini (850 k, 53 sec, mono)
A magnificent start of the big block.
Trackside/Station
A-324
(ALCo DL543) with 613 to Thessaloniki near Kilkis (625 kB, 39 sec, mono)
A-324 is running 80 minutes late with train 613 and accelerates downhill
(!) after departing Kilkis.
A-324
(ALCo DL543) is fired up at Serres (497 kB, 30 sec, mono)
Hear a 12-251C engine come to life and then some idling.
A-470 (MLW MX627) with
502 to Thessaloniki departing Larissa (1.2 MB, 1:14 min, mono)
A-470 is pounding away like a steam engine, loco was in extremely bad
shape and poured out large quantities of smoke and glowing cinders.
A-558 (Electroputere
LDE4000) with 503 to Athens departing Thessaloniki (898 kB, 55 sec,
mono)
A-558 is leaving Thessaloniki, recorded from the footbridge at the coach
depot.
A-414
(Krauss-Maffei V200.1) leaves Thessaloniki with train 23501 (1.2 MB,
1:14 min, mono)
Not quite an ALCo. The twin-engined diesel-hydraulic loco is in its last
days, running on one engine only. It departs Thessaloniki with the nightly
express freight train 23501 to Athens.
Last update 09.08.03