Description

Recording railroad crossing sounds in the USA

When I lived in California, I took any opportunity to record the sounds of trains. As we all know, not all sounds are the same and that’s especially true for the locomotives in the United States. For this recording session, I took a day trip to Sante Fe Springs to an industrial area. There was a lot of activity there and I thought it would be a perfect spot to set up my recorders near the railroad crossing.

Not only did I record the train and the safety gate closing I also captured sounds of cars, trucks, and motorbikes driving over the railroad crossing! This sound had so much power and I loved everything about it! I had perfect timing of getting the dings, Amtrack, and freight trains.

If you listen to the bell sound you realize that there is a quiet one in the beginning and after a few seconds later. That is because there were two crossroads and the first one was about 100 meters away. In the background, you’ll also hear the locomotive horn approaching. When it got closer it was extremely loud and powerful. I felt like ears were going explode!

I recorded these sounds with three different microphones. For my mono setup, I used a Rode NTG 4+ and the Audio Technica 835b. My stereo recordings were with the Zoom H6.