Audio Restoration-The Railroad Record Club
Audio Restoration-The Railroad Record Club. For many years, in addition to my audio engineering, 
production and acoustical consulting, I’ve enjoyed restoring analog audio for a vast array of unique people. Projects can be as simple as restoring a cassette of a long departed family member’s voice to projects as complex as restoring an entire catalog of archival work from major artists such as the British Invasion rockers, the Kinks.
My favorite audio restoration adventures, however, come from bringing truly lost sounds back into the light of day. Some audio recordings have been long forgotten. And some have been shelved as their creators were forced to prioritize other more pressing aspects of their lives. Several of these unknown recorded works have come my way recently. I believe the passage of time adds meaning, value and context to these largely undiscovered audio efforts.
William Steventon & The Railroad Record Club
This blog will profile William Steventon and the Railroad Record Club that operated from 1953 to 1973. The Railroad Record Club distributed the thunderous sounds of America’s long lost steam and electric locomotives on RCA custom pressed 10″ vinyl records.
Audio Restoration-The Railroad Record Club
from the Trolly Dodger website:
“William A. Steventon was born in 1921 in Mount Carmel, Illinois, son of a locomotive engineer on the Big Four Railroad (New York Central). As a child he spent much of his time around the red brick passenger station and wooden freight house across from Main Street. The family eventually moved to Cairo, Illinois and there he would often ride in the locomotive cab with his engineer father.
After serving in World War II Steventon married and took a government job. He and his wife settled in the Washington DC area and it is here that the Railroad Record Club story begins.
It all began when Steventon’s wife gave him a record of Railroad sound effects as a Christmas gift, most likely in 1952. While he was interested in the concept of recorded train sounds, he was very dissatisfied with this record. Steventon was convinced that the sounds were not those of actual trains, that they were train “effects” created in a recording studio. William wanted sound recordings of REAL trains. He purchased one of the new reel to reel tape recorders that had recently become available and in March 1953, set out to make his first railroad sound recordings.”
To finance his new passion for Railroad recordings about 1956-57 William founded the Railroad Record Club. Members’ fees went to offset his time, recording, jacket printing, and RCA record pressing costs. Over the ensuing years, 42 LP records were recorded and issued to club members and later as a mail order business.
Audio Restoration-The Railroad Record Club
As an experienced audio engineer, I really appreciate the fact that William along with a few other serious railroad buffs were “on location” capturing these steam and electric locomotive and train sounds. The mono sound levels contained on these reels are very dynamic and no easy ask to record in the field. I also love the fact that Steventon and a few other train buffs shared these unique recordings with each other. And through their actions, ended up preserving something important that is now lost.
William Steventon’s elaborates:
“We had a 12-volt auto battery for the primary power source, a 12 v.d.c. to 110 v.a.c. rotary converter, a reel to reel recorder plus a satchel of extra equipment, tapes, and assorted material. Two men could struggle with all this equipment, but it required three men to carry everything with any degree of ease and mobility. In addition, we normally carried a battery charger for use with keeping the battery up to par during the night. This could be left in the auto during the day. But it was a very necessary part of our total equipment requirement.”
The Railroad Recordings Find A New Home
These tape reels came to me for audio restoration from Thundertone Audio client Kenneth Gear of New Jersey. Gear had recently acquired, through no small effort and expense, William Steventon’s extensive collection. These audio reels were recorded at locations across fifteen states.
Kenneth explains: “I have been interested in historic preservation for a long time. And it’s not every day 
that anyone comes across original material such as this. Suddenly, out of nowhere it seems, previously unknown, un-issued audio recordings have emerged for some long-vanished steam and electric railroads. Along with 16mm motion picture film, and various artifacts related to the Railroad Record Club’s 42 issued LPs. It seems like a miracle that somehow, it all survived to be rescued from oblivion.”
William Steventon continued to sell his records through the yearly club membership plan until October 1965. After then, the records were sold separately and at the same price to everyone.
But in February 1973, RCA sadly informed Steventon that they would no longer be able to press records from his catalogue. To make matters worse, RCA had somehow lost or destroyed all his 10″ metal master discs. This was a major setback at the time because his existing recordings would now need to be remastered. No longer for 10″ records, but for the 70’s more common 12″ LP format. William was then forced into a new funding model to keep his life’s passion of distributing these unique train recordings viable. This he did for much of the remainder of his life until his passing in 1993.
Audio Restoration-The Railroad Record Club
Sometime after Kenneth Gear had painstakingly acquired William Steventon’s large collection of train recordings, he contacted me for the audio restoration work. Many reels were carefully restored which included reworking dried out tape edits, and checking for tape hydrolysis. I then transferred the many reels to a digital audio archival medium via my Studer analog tape machine.
Maybe you have unique audio that requires specialized audio restoration? If so, please contact me anytime for a free quote!
Mike Konopka
*all images courtesy of and thanks to: The Trolly Dodger
Many Thanks to Kenneth Gear!
One thought on “Audio Restoration-The Railroad Record Club”
Thank you for the kind words and I’m happy to know you find value in my attempts to preserve this audio history. You may be interested to know that I have donated copies of the CDs to railroad historical societies and they have been quite enthusiastic about the subject matter as well as your fine restoration work. If you remember a tape with the sounds of the British Columbia Electric Railway ( reel 24), the audio from it is now being played in the actual car from which the recording was made in 1956. Car number 1220 has been fully restored and is in a museum in Canada. They were thrilled that I had a recording of their car in regular service. I donated a copy and they now play it by request when museum goers tour the car.
Another interesting thing; reel 10 has the sounds of the Cincinnati Street Railway on it. Research I did along with the Cincinnati Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society has determined that this is the only known audio of this streetcar line. Turns out that the cars were being scrapped at the time of the recordings and the recordist was a employee of the company and he started up one car to record the sounds- just days before the car meet it’s doom.
Reel 8 was very warmly received by the Spooner Railroad Memories Museum in Wisconsin and reel 5, the tape with the dispatcher recording his last night at work in the roundhouse, has the New York Susquehanna & Western RR Historical Society trying to track down the man’s family. Other interesting things has happened with some of the other reels as well and I have come into contact with many interesting and informative people through these tapes, you included. It’s been a great experience.