And you thought the real thing was enough. Lionel is now making model NYC subway trains complete with the screeching sounds. How about the malfunctioning speakers that distort the voice of the conductors? How about some of the conductor’s voices? How about the inner thoughts of the passengers when they’re expected to understand what’s being said (i.e. "WTF. I hope that wasn’t important information because I didn’t understand a thing,") This from the New York Times.

All week, a man with a microphone has walked the subway platforms to
collect the clattering of the rivets and the whistling horns, the
distortion in the loudspeaker, the hush in the compressor’s song and
the dying of the brake like some wounded thing.

Even in that
racket, some find value. The recordings are the chief selling point of
a new reproduction of a subway train by the Lionel model train company
made under a license from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for
completion by year’s end.

Other companies have made models
before, but this one pays unparalleled attention to sonic detail,
recreating the subterranean soundscape in elaborate hi-fi to win the
favor of collectors and self-styled train geeks, keepers of a nostalgic
anachronism to rank alongside comic books and baseball cards.

Among
their number count the musician Neil Young, so devoted that he
conceived a control system to reproduce the sounds of the rails, then
acquired a minority interest in Lionel more than a decade ago.

“Realism
is the byword,” Mr. Young said by telephone. “It’s a heavy thing moving
down a track, like a real thing even though it’s a miniature.”

The
system he championed has been used to recreate old steam engines, the
historic diesels of the short lines and the Acelas of the Atlantic
seaboard. The subway model will combine the sounds of vintage cars with
recreated station announcements from the Brighton Local, a predecessor
of the Q train, which runs from Midtown to Coney Island.