Lionel FreightSounds Reefers, from 2018 Volume 2

I was looking at the Pennsylvania FreightSounds boxcar at the hobby shop last week and was wondering if it was worth it.

After watching the video.....Im going back after work and getting it...........

I am not sure if the PS1 boxcars have them same soundset as these reefers.

Yes, I agree. I think it's a tad too hollow sounding as well, but not to the point that I don't like it. I mean I like the sound of that MTH locomotive in the video too! 😂.
There are plenty of recordings of the PRR 3 chime from a reasonable distance and it is actually pretty blah and boring sounding (that's made me more accepting of some of the earlier MTH PS2 PRR whistles which I thought were meh, not dynamic, but in reality are probably pretty accurate).


I am such the train dork that I often listen to the old recordings that you can find on the market (semaphore records, etc.) and I guess I hear a wide variety of sounds on those to the point that I am more accepting that there isn't one way trains should sound. The distance from the sound is a huge factor. I feel like a lot of the modern Lionel sounds too much like you are literally on the train not watching/listening from 100 scale feet away.

Same with these cars, it's like a sound that might happen literally inside an empty box car. Not what I would do if I was making this car, but Lionel crossed some invisible threshold with these for me. The previous versions I didn't like, but these I do. It really is subjective as to what we are each looking for from it.

I have a small Bluetooth speaker in one of my box cars and I sometimes play a recoding of a real train through it. That's fine, but it doesn't react to speed or start stop and I have to do stuff with my phone to get the sound going and to shut it off. So I don't really do it often.

Yes, it's a work in progress! Thank you!

Thanks for the updates,Jeff.

Yup. I was sort of out of the hobby for a few years, and then after I got back in I was at York and heard one of those kind of FreightSounds cars. At first the idea of it (no programming, just put it on the rails) appealed to me. Then I listened and wasn't liking it. That's why I am more accepting of the new reefers, which aren't perfect but do pretty close to what I want.

On the other hand, I guess coming from Visionline cars to these is meeting them coming from the opposite direction, so people are disappointed by comparison.

I am still not 100% sure which cars have which sounds, but it seems like only these reefers from 2018 Volume 2 have this sound set, and all the PS1 FreightSounds cars, even those from 2018 Volume 2, have not this sound set that's in the reefers.