Choo Choo Sonic Horns

I am sure that steam trains hold a fascination for most of us – whether it is their sleek design, quality of build or simply just their sheer power!

Coming from Ireland, my boyhood experience of steam trains was via The Belfast & County Down Railway formed in 1848. It had several key lines, however as I lived in a country town of Dromore, the main line from Belfast to Newcastle was ‘my’ railway line, especially as my love of Newcastle, County Down has never waned.

This particular line opened in 1869 and as was the case through the Victorian railway heyday period, the railway companies built grand hotels at the end of key rail terminals. Having recently attended another Big Band Concert and listened to one of my favourite Glen Miller songs – The Chattanooga Choo Choo (first recorded by him in 1941), I was interested to learn a little about the history on which this marvellous song was founded.

The first Chattanooga Choo Choo Train was Cincinnati Southern Railroad's small wood burning steam locomotive that started its journey through history from Cincinnati, Ohio on March 5, 1880. Nearly all trains travelling to the South passed through Chattanooga. The wood-burning "Choo Choo" was the first to provide non-stop service. In the Miller era, Mack Gordon’s song traces the progress of the train from New York’s Pennsylvania Station south to Chattanooga’s sprawling Terminal Station, making ‘Track 29’ famous. The original old fashioned wood burning trains were replaced by modern trains which were superb in their design, construction and performance and certainly stood the test of time. Likewise our Primasonics Sonic Horns lead the way in exactly those three essential attributes – design, construction and performance.

Back in Ireland of course as excited young boys, my brother and I were forever poking our heads out of the carriage window which usually resulted in us getting particles of soot being ‘deposited’ in our eyes. The main means of removal was for our mother to lick the end of her hanky and poke out the offending ‘soot build up’ – such simple but happy excursions!

It perhaps is somewhat ironic that today our range of Sonic Horns have replaced the old fashioned steam soot blowers because they offer a modern, proven, non destructive means to prevent and remove soot/ash build up from occurring within industrial boilers, superheaters, economisers and air heaters etc within the power generation industry thus significantly improving the boiler’s thermal efficiency and reducing fuel usage. The photograph shows one of our new range of horns (1 of 17 installed) located on a boiler with the now redundant steam sootblower to the left.