Train whistle (horn) Question

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Hanno

OBS Chief
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
584
Location
South Central PA
I am currently on the Auto Train heading south. After a relatively good night of rest punctuated with the faint sound of the persistent horn blowing at crossings, a question comes to mind. Does the engineer have to manually blow the horn at each crossing or is it done automatically, perhaps by a signal buried in the tracks ahead of the crossing? Just curious.

Thanks!
 
Alerted to do so by a sign that usually looks something like this:

240px-WhistlePost.jpg


Also, unlike the last ship that I was on where you could hit a button to sound a preset signal, the whistle is completely manual, the engineer has to tap out the long-long-short-long themselves.
 
Since the length of the sequence and when to start blowing depends on the speed of the train, it is hard to automate that simply. It would do no good if you are done blowing the sequence and your still 200 yards away from the actual road that it was meant for! :)
 
I don't know about passenger engines, but some freight locomotives do have a horn sequencer, a peddle on the floor the engineer can put his foot on to blow the - - 0 - crossing signal. It just repeats until its released. Most engineers do not care for it though, and properly blow the crossings using the horn. It is handy though in those instances where you need a 3rd hand though!
 
I don't know about passenger engines, but some freight locomotives do have a horn sequencer, a peddle on the floor the engineer can put his foot on to blow the - - 0 - crossing signal. It just repeats until its released. Most engineers do not care for it though, and properly blow the crossings using the horn. It is handy though in those instances where you need a 3rd hand though!
when your trying to put on your makeup while texting and drinking a cup of cappuccino from Starbucks?
 
The "horn of choice" for most Amtrak engines is the Nathan K5LA and if you've got an extra $1,500 or so lying around and a large enough vehicle you too can have one! The guy in this video has his tuned in just right:

 
I don't know about passenger engines, but some freight locomotives do have a horn sequencer, a peddle on the floor the engineer can put his foot on to blow the - - 0 - crossing signal. It just repeats until its released. Most engineers do not care for it though, and properly blow the crossings using the horn. It is handy though in those instances where you need a 3rd hand though!
Amtrak equipment (including cab cars) have the same feature.

A few engineers use it, but most don't.
 
As said previously, it is hard for the sequence to be totally unto mated, due to different speeds of freight and passenger locomotives. Even with passenger locomotives, you may have a (say) 40 MPH slow order area on a 79 MPH stretch. That alone would mess up the sequence/timing.

On a grade crossing, the sequence is long-long-short-long. The final horn blast MUST be when the locomotive is at the grade crossing. That's why you may hear more than 4 blasts sometimes!
 
With a horn on your car like the one in the video, one could scare the (blank)

out of other drivers on the road!!
 
I am currently on the Auto Train heading south. After a relatively good night of rest punctuated with the faint sound of the persistent horn blowing at crossings, a question comes to mind. Does the engineer have to manually blow the horn at each crossing or is it done automatically, perhaps by a signal buried in the tracks ahead of the crossing? Just curious.
Thanks!
In an effort to control the almost continuous noise of train horns (over 100/day) some communities like Flagstaff, Az, have installed crossing gate-mounted wayside horns with speakers directed up and down the roadway instead of down the tracks as the locomotive horn does. It still sounds the the appropriate signal (- - o -) repetatively until the train enters the crossing. (Other crossings in downtown FLG have been equipped with street and pedestrian gates and no horn is sounded at all.).Engiineers including Amtrak, are prohibited by from sounding the locomotive horn except for emergencies, which by then,in most cases, is too late.
 
With a horn on your car like the one in the video, one could scare the (blank)out of other drivers on the road!!
Wow, I agree completely. I'd think that sort of horn should be illegal for use off the railways. The whole point of that loud, recognizable sound is to alert you that you're near a grade crossing with a train nearby. If I heard a horn that loud and that close, I'd probably stop the car for fear of hitting a train. Perhaps I'm biased because I live & drive near a lot of unmarked crossings, but I think this is a really bad / dangerous idea.
 
Alerted to do so by a sign that usually looks something like this:
240px-WhistlePost.jpg


Also, unlike the last ship that I was on where you could hit a button to sound a preset signal, the whistle is completely manual, the engineer has to tap out the long-long-short-long themselves.
A former engineer friend of mine told me, and I am sure things have changed, but it is two longs and a short repeated twice i. e. - - . - - . with a break or rest between repeates and then after the second repeat just blow until the engine is half way across the grade crossing.
 
As I understand it (and others in this thread have said), --o- is the correct pattern with the short coming just before the train gets to the crossing and then the last long sounding as the locomotive goes through the crossing.
 
It is true quite a few crossings are being modified with "NO TRAIN HORN" signs due to noise complaints. The roadway is completely blocked by gates (usually two gates instead of one in the direction of travel) and a center median installed so there is no way to go around the gate directly in front of it. Also on Caltrain they moved the horn position around too times as it was "too loud" for people living nearby. But then it became "too quiet" to meet the regulatory requirements. So it was moved yet again.

Personally, unless a train track was built when one lived in a certain place or rail service was just established, people should (hopefully) understand that there will generally be noise if one lives next to rail road tracks!
 
Let's hope those automatic gate horns function properly! Seems less safe than the engineer sounding the horn from the train. Machines do malfunction sometimes.

I love the sound of train horns in the distance. I live just within earshot of a track.
 
A former engineer friend of mine told me, and I am sure things have changed, but it is two longs and a short repeated twice i. e. - - . - - . with a break or rest between repeates and then after the second repeat just blow until the engine is half way across the grade crossing.
I don't know the full history of whistle rules, but it has been long, long, short, long for a long (not short) time, on pretty much every railroad in the country. A bit of a web search into the history suggests these have been standard since the late 1800s. So, unless your former engineer friend was running steam before the automobile was invented, or unless he worked for some railroad that, for whatever reason, had a different set of whistle regulations, then the above is probably incorrect.
 
Personally, unless a train track was built when one lived in a certain place or rail service was just established, people should (hopefully) understand that there will generally be noise if one lives next to rail road tracks!
One would hope for that, but alas it's far from the reality.

People buy houses next to airport runways; and then complain about the noise. So we find pilots now doing stunts that would make a fighter pilot proud, like throttling back their power seconds after leaving the runway and making sharp turns all to prevent someone from hearing too much noise. I don't recall if that's O'Hare or Midway in Chicago where they have to perform that nonsense, but regardless it's a dance that pilots should never have to do!

And we spend billions in this country erecting sound barriers alongside highways because someone brought a house without considering how loud the highway would be. :rolleyes:

So I'm not at all surprised that people buying a house next to a train track never consider the noise associated with it. And then of course it becomes a problem that someone else should solve for them, as it couldn't be their poor decision that caused the issue.
 
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