We took advantage of every opportunity to record train sounds while living in Orange County, California. As we all know, not all sounds are the same, and this is especially true for America’s powerful locomotives.

We took a day trip to Santa Fe Springs for this recording session and parked next to an industrial park. There was a lot of activity there, and we thought it would be a great site to put up our gear close to the railroad crossing throughout the day, with the heavy industrial ambience and traffic in the background.

Not only did we record the train, train horns, ringing bells, and the opening and closing of the safety gate, but we also recorded the sounds of cars, trucks, and motorcycles passing over the railroad crossing! These sound effects are quite powerful, and the timing of the dings, an Amtrak train, and freight trains was excellent.

When you listen to the railway crossing safety bell sound, you notice that one of the sounds is further away, which is because there were two crossroads and the first one was around 50 meters away.

You’ll also hear a very loud freight train approaching in the background with its loud horn. It became tremendously louder and forceful as the train approached and passed by.

In terms of equipment, we used three different microphones. We utilized a Rode NTG 4+ and an Audio Technica 835b for the mono setup, and a Zoom H6 for the stereo configuration.

If you’re searching for additional train and train station sound effects, we recommend checking out our vast train sound library, which has hundreds of train recordings from all over the world recorded by us.