Hello Train
A train app for kids, from toddlers up. Tap a photograph of a real locomotive and hear a recording of a real train. Everything in it is named, down to the class of the engine and the model of the horn.
In development. Not yet released.
What it is
The app opens on a set of big picture doors: Engines, Passenger cars, Cabooses, Work trains, More trains and Train sounds. Behind a picture door is one photograph at a time, and tapping the photograph plays its sound.
Behind the Train sounds door the sounds are laid out as a grid of large tiles. Under the grid is a card that plays the grade crossing signal, long, long, short, long, from a recording of an engineer sounding it on a Nathan AirChime M5.
The names are there for parents, grandparents and railfans of any age. Press and hold a tile, or tap the small button in the corner of a photograph, and a sheet opens with the horn's model and maker, the locomotive's class and operator, and where the recording and the photograph came from. The facts on a photograph's page are sourced, and one the sources disagree on is left out.
The sounds come from a lot of places. There are diesel horns such as the Nathan AirChime K5LA and the Leslie SuperTyfon, steam whistles, British Rail diesels, level crossings in Germany and Japan, a New York subway door chime, wagons coupling in a yard and a San Francisco cable car bell.
How it is built
Where a recording's own source names the horn, the app names it. Where the model was worked out from the sound, the label puts "Likely" in front of it.
Every photograph is of a real train, and the app gives its class and operator. The photograph and the recording come from different sources, and the app says so: the train pictured is not necessarily the one you hear.
A small child will hit the same tile ten times in a few seconds, and each of those taps plays. One sound plays at a time, so a new tap cuts off the one before it.
Settings has a volume limit, which caps how loud the app can play whatever the device volume is, and a sleep timer. The toddler lock hides settings and the detail sheets. Buying, restoring a purchase, turning the lock off, emailing us, and rating or sharing the app all sit behind a parental gate. The parent chooses how to get through it, from holding a moving target for three seconds to typing the answer to a sum.
There are no ads in the app and there never will be. The one purchase is what pays for it.
The app makes no network connections of its own and works with no signal at all. Buying goes through Apple or Google, and so does the check each time the app opens for whether you have bought.
Part of the catalogue is free. A single purchase adds every other sound for good, with no subscription and nothing that expires. Sounds you haven't bought stay in view with a lock on them, so you can see what the purchase adds before paying.
The recordings and photographs come from openly licensed archives, and the people who made them are credited in the app's acknowledgements.
Availability
Hello Train is being built for iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets. It has not been released. The store links will appear here when it has.
Privacy
The app collects no data, and there are no accounts or analytics. Your settings and the sounds you have starred are kept on the device, and the app never sends them anywhere. Your device's own iCloud or Google backup includes them. The policy is the same text the app shows under Settings.
Contact
The support page covers restoring a purchase and finding your way around the parent controls. Anything else about the app, including feature requests, goes to hellotrain@axoniteglobal.com.
Hello Train is published by Axonite Global LLC. For general and business inquiries, write to hello@axoniteglobal.com.