why do they blow the horn so much

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Grade separations can illuminate crossings altogether which improves safety. No more traffic congestion, no more horn blowing. The public nuisance created by train horns can also be avoided through a Quiet Zone, which through railroad lobbying is paid for by the tax payer. How nice, the railroad lobby still thinks we live in the 1800's.
 
Grade separations can [eliminate] crossings altogether which improves safety. No more traffic congestion, no more horn blowing. The public nuisance created by train horns can also be avoided through a Quiet Zone, which through railroad lobbying is paid for by the tax payer. How nice, the railroad lobby still thinks we live in the 1800's.
Most of the tracks were laid long before houses went up, so I don't blame the railroads for asking the homeowners who knowingly bought a house next to train tracks to pony up for the Quiet Zone.

Train horns are not a "public nuisance". They are a necessity, just like sirens on emergency vehicles.
 
The tragic results of what happens when people cannot hear the warning horns. This happened on the MAX light rail rather than Amtrak, but the issue is the same. (Emphasis mine.)

Washington woman identified as pedestrian fatally injured by Portland MAX train



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A 62-year-old Washington woman was struck by a westbound MAX train early Sept. 5 near Portland's Lloyd Center. She later died from her injuries at a hospital. (Brent Wojahn/The Oregonian)



A Washington woman died after being hit by a MAX train in Northeast Portland early Thursday, authorities say.

Yvonne Osredkar, 62, of Ridgefield, Wash., was the pedestrian struck while in a marked crosswalk about 7:40 a.m. near Northeast 7th Avenue and Holladay Street, the Multnomah County Medical Examiner's Office said. It marks the second TriMet train-related death this year....

After being hit, Osredkar was dragged a short distance and then pinned between the tracks and the train's undercarriage, said Lt. Rich Chatman, a Portland Fire & Rescue spokesman. She was taken to a hospital in the area after being freed and later died there.

Reviews of surveillance video show Osredkar may have not heard the MAX train coming because of nearby heavy construction, police said.
Earlier articles indicated that this accident pretty well shut down the MAX, as it occurred in a location where multiple lines run in the same place.
 
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Who can we complain to ? I have noticed that the blasts during the night 10pm till 5am seem pretty extreme.

i hear on avg 5-9 long blasts that are starting to rattle windows. During the day i hear the 2 long, 1 sort, 1 long and it is okay. I have read that im near a busy corridor in Central calif. Modesto ca. But see no reason for the excessive blasts when no one is out in this part of the town

.
 
If there's a grade crossing (even if it's a private driveway, farm vehicle crossing, etc...), and no matter if it's 2 pm and heavy traffic or 3 am with "nobody around", federal law requires a locomotive to sound it's horn for that crossing! And what if it's 3:30 am and a car comes to the crossing and a train comes along? The train can't put on it's brakes and stop on a dime! Or swerve to miss the vehicle.

Depending on the length of the train and the speed it's going, it could take the train a mile to stop! Thus the warning of the horn.

*** Please note that the majority of this thread is over 1 1/2 years old, but still relevant today ...
 
Complaining is useless. It's federal law and it's for the safety of all involved. The train MUST blow long-long-short-long at every grade crossing. No exceptions, no concessions, no second thoughts. MUST do it.

On most of the Great Basin desert, there's no crossings at all for miles, so you can sleep better.
 
The tragic results of what happens when people cannot hear the warning horns. This happened on the MAX light rail rather than Amtrak, but the issue is the same. ... Earlier articles indicated that this accident pretty well shut down the MAX, as it occurred in a location where multiple lines run in the same place.
3 of the (current) 4 MAX lines operate along that section.
 
Complaining is useless. It's federal law and it's for the safety of all involved. The train MUST blow long-long-short-long at every grade crossing. No exceptions, no concessions, no second thoughts. MUST do it.

On most of the Great Basin desert, there's no crossings at all for miles, so you can sleep better.
That's not fully true the grade crossings could be upgraded and the line could become a federally designated Quiet Zone

A Quick Google Search for the full page on the Train Horn Rule from the FRA Website.
 
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About twenty years ago, my son and I were on the Texas Eagle, listening to the RR frequencies on our portable scanner, when the engineer seriously hit the brakes. His voice on our scanner said something, I don't remember what. But I never want to hear that voice again.

JackM

I think it was in Cleburne, TX. We backed up and were there about 45 minutes. Actually, an Amtrak train can apply a lot of braking force, but no train can "stop in time".
 
It's just like when I was growing up in (then-rural) Frederick County, MD. In the early 90's the rush of suburbia was just reaching out there, and the complaints about the smell from the dairy farm adjacent to our neighborhood was in credible. Everyone was all "We didn't know that the manure was going to smell so bad and why do you have to spread it in the fields?". Permission granted to do a little research and exercise some personal responsibility when you're buying a house.

But see no reason for the excessive blasts when no one is out in this part of the town.
Looking further at the FRA database of grade crossing incidents, I see accidents occuring in Modesto at grade crossings at all hours of the day and night. So your supposition that "no one is out" is incorrect, since people are colliding with trains all the time.
 
Complaining is useless. It's federal law and it's for the safety of all involved. The train MUST blow long-long-short-long at every grade crossing. No exceptions, no concessions, no second thoughts. MUST do it.

On most of the Great Basin desert, there's no crossings at all for miles, so you can sleep better.
That's not fully true the grade crossings could be upgraded and the line could become a federally designated Quiet Zone

A Quick Google Search for the full page on the Train Horn Rule from the FRA Website.
San Antonio has been making FRA mandated changes in order to create quiet zones. It's not a hard task for a major city to accomplish. I'm not sure they're as safe at first, mainly because our citizens need time to become familiar with the concept of silent crossings, but other than that I support the goals of lowering noise while still keeping safety to reasonable levels. If you're an alert driver you won't get hit. If you're a clueless phone-focused idiot or aggressive road raging (person), well, nice knowing you. The only problem I have with silent crossings is that they're nearly impossible to leave if the train stops or the crossing itself fails to deactivate. It creates a huge unmitigated mess that seems ripe for an accident.

Anyway, I'll now return you to the endless mocking of anyone who dares to mention undesirable sights, sounds, or smells in their neighborhood. Let them eat cake and all that.
 
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Anyway, I'll now return you to the endless mocking of anyone who dares to mention undesirable sights, sounds, or smells in their neighborhood. Let them eat cake and all that.
It's a shame that's not what's happening here. There are plenty of things to complain about. Train horns when you choose to live near the railroad tracks isn't one of them.
 
Anyway, I'll now return you to the endless mocking of anyone who dares to mention undesirable sights, sounds, or smells in their neighborhood. Let them eat cake and all that.
Oh, please. If someone moves next to a railroad crossing, airport, hospital, police station, or major street, they should be darn well prepared to hear some noise. We aren't mocking them; we're pointing out their flawed accusations.
 
Anyway, I'll now return you to the endless mocking of anyone who dares to mention undesirable sights, sounds, or smells in their neighborhood. Let them eat cake and all that.
Oh, please. If someone moves next to a railroad crossing, airport, hospital, police station, or major street, they should be darn well prepared to hear some noise. We aren't mocking them; we're pointing out their flawed accusations.
What I see is a lot of generalizing about anyone who complains about noises or smells that predated their arrival.

Everything is black-and-white based on whatever arrived first.

By that logic anyone who complains about contamination from the local power plant is an idiot because the plant was there first.

I don't think I can agree with or support that kind of one-sided logic.

Not to mention that millions of lower class Americans don't get to choose if tracks or power plants are next to them or not.

But I guess that's more bout nuance and who needs nuance when we can just mock anyone who disagrees with the majority?
 
By that logic anyone who complains about contamination from the local power plant is an idiot because the plant was there first.
I think the flaw in your example is that power plants are not supposed to produce contamination whereas trains are supposed to blow their horns. Can you think of a better example?

jb
 
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Precisely. Contamination is a bad thing, regardless of where it is and when the source was built.

On balance, train horns are a good thing (outside of quiet zones). Moving in next to one and complaining about it only demonstrates a lack of personal responsibility.
 
Anyway, I'll now return you to the endless mocking of anyone who dares to mention undesirable sights, sounds, or smells in their neighborhood. Let them eat cake and all that.
Oh, please. If someone moves next to a railroad crossing, airport, hospital, police station, or major street, they should be darn well prepared to hear some noise. We aren't mocking them; we're pointing out their flawed accusations.
I live two blocks from a hospital. However, this hospital is smack in the middle of a residental neighborhood and the ambulances are not supposed to use sirens while in the neighborhood. I made sure to research this and understand it before I purchased my home last year.

Now, if they decide to change the policy regarding ambulances, you can certainly bet that I will complain if I start hearing sirens at 2 am. However there is a very active neighborhood association and the hospital is very good about neighborhood relations, so I doubt it would change.

But it would be like if you bought a house next to tracks in a quiet zone. If the quiet zone was somehow removed, would you have a right to be annoyed? Probably.
 
It's not just "lower class Americans". Some are "upper class Americans" who complain about train noise or power plants or airport noise in "their neighborhoods", even though those have been located there 50-100 years before they moved there. Also look at the town near TAC that doesn't want the Cascades line to be relocated thru their town. They complain about the passengers trains going thru their town, yet all the freight trains that use the line today are OK. But Amtrak using those tracks? No, no, no, no!
 
NIMBYs are Everywhere but I'll agree with Chris that Historically the "Poor Part of Town" (ie 'across the tracks") got all the stuff no-one wanted in their Neighborhood! What changes this? Becoming Politically Active and Voting!!! This is what is Scaring the Anti-Rail/Anti-Everything Crowd today hence the Campaign to Supress the Vote!!! :ph34r:
 
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Anyway, I'll now return you to the endless mocking of anyone who dares to mention undesirable sights, sounds, or smells in their neighborhood. Let them eat cake and all that.
Oh, please. If someone moves next to a railroad crossing, airport, hospital, police station, or major street, they should be darn well prepared to hear some noise. We aren't mocking them; we're pointing out their flawed accusations.
I live two blocks from a hospital. However, this hospital is smack in the middle of a residental neighborhood and the ambulances are not supposed to use sirens while in the neighborhood. I made sure to research this and understand it before I purchased my home last year.
Now, if they decide to change the policy regarding ambulances, you can certainly bet that I will complain if I start hearing sirens at 2 am. However there is a very active neighborhood association and the hospital is very good about neighborhood relations, so I doubt it would change.

But it would be like if you bought a house next to tracks in a quiet zone. If the quiet zone was somehow removed, would you have a right to be annoyed? Probably.
Sure.
But that isn't the case here.
 
By that logic anyone who complains about contamination from the local power plant is an idiot because the plant was there first.
I think the flaw in your example is that power plants are not supposed to produce contamination whereas trains are supposed to blow their horns. Can you think of a better example?

jb
Early power plants had charters that made little or no reference to pollution or safety or efficiency or hundreds of other concerns that came long after the plants were built. Should those plants be grandfathered in or is there something unique about one impact versus another? For instance would there be a noise loud enough or a smell strong enough to compete with lead poisoning? The militarization of noise as a weapon and the ability for a strong smell to wake unconscious people would seem to be proof that it can have a substantial impact on quality of life over time. What about someone who lives in a house near the tracks which they inherited from their parents? Are they not allowed to expect anything better than what they started with without first moving somewhere else? If we really hold to that ideal then we might as well forget about high speed rail since there's no corridor left that won't require moving someone who was there first. Back to the original topic, to my understanding the original purpose of the train horn was safety. If the goal of safe operation can be sufficiently maintained through means other than a horn then what is fundamentally wrong with requesting or supporting such changes?
 
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I fail to see the reason for the venom launched toward someone who wants to improve their quality of life. It is like they should not even have the right to question horn use. The railroad has been there for 100 years? So what? If, in 2013, there is a better way of protecting crossings that does not involve horn use, why not ask for it?
 
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