Scale 12

It’s a horn.   You could call it a ship’s whistle or audible signaling device.  It’s clearly not a bell, but that would work also.  From three years ago, here’s another one of these devices.

From this photo below, you have no sense of size, though, do you?

 

Nor do you get that from here, unless . . . .

you identify the structure “behind” the horn as a ladder, scaled to a member of a crew.  Now imagine this horn atop the roof of your pickup truck.

Below and to the left . . . you make out the name?

Still see the horn up there?  Can you imagine being on that ladder when the horn sounds?  Can you imagine a seagull that has perched there just before a signal?  Click here if you want to hear it, but first, turn the volume waaaaay up to 11.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who wonders whether both horns blow the same pitch and whether it’s true that some QM equipment has been integrated into the QM2’s whistle.

Here are some sound codes.

And here are lots of Great Lakes sounds.