Historical Locos

ANY recording of steam locos would be MOST appreciated!!!!!!!!

Straight .wav files would work too.

Depends on the bit rate, number of bits (8 or 16) and mono- or stereo. Right now I can't remember the bandwidth of "Hi-Fi", but double that (the Nyquist frequency), and select the next higher rate from the rates that .wav files USUALLY use (11025, 22050, or 44100 Hz). 16-bit is nice, but most records have such lousy scratches and such that 8-bit is often as good. A 44100Hz 16-bit Stereo file is 16 times bigger than a 11025, 8-bit Mono file. Most compression techniques add audio artifacts (just like .jpg adds visual artifacts). Unless the records are stereo, use mono. Even if they are stereo, if the scenario does not benefit from the Stereo sensation, use mono anyway.

If you plan to "clean" any of the files (remove pop, click and needle hiss or wow and flutter) START with .wav files, and maybe share (or publish) the files in some sort of compressed format. Personally, I would want .wav so I can do the cleaning myself... I've done a lot of it.

I spent 100's of hours cleaning a (78RPM) recording of my Dad singing with the church choir (when I was less than 1 year old). I learned an awful lot about removing clicks, pops and hiss from "records". If you would like some help with clean up, feel free to send to me what ever files you feel comfortable sharing and I will be happy to spend some time doing some manual cleaning of the audio and return the results. I have some Steam Locomotive sound records of my own that I would like to copy to .wav files, but I no longer have a turntable.

We can confabulate on this via PMs if you wish.