Trains whistle. Whistles/horns are regulated as to level of noise and when to be sounded.
Cities/residents hate the noise. Train horns have become louder and have a sharper sound to them - to the point of hurting sensitive ears that are close by.
What I don’t know:
Why the change from a less sharp, more mellow SD40 horn to the super loud, annoying newer horns. Amtrak runs on those same tracks and the horn is a lot more mellow and doesn’t seem as loud.
AND - cities - this will be one of them - are looking to make a whole lot of crossings either silent or with the horns at the crossing.
Are there facts and figures to back up the need to have a sharper, louder horn? Has making the engineer whistle through the crossing and so many feet before it made a difference in saving the public from themselves?
The older engines I see don’t seem to have accidents and their horns are a lot more tolerable.
One possibility: on the older locomotives the horn was activated by pulling on an air valve on the control stand. This valve regulated the amount of air going to the horn. The engineer could then regulate the intensity of the horn (and sometimes the melody as well, because the different “chimes” usually activate at different air pressures).
On the new locomotives, there is a stupid push-button that causes the horn to sound. And it is a “all-or-nothing” activation. The only thing the engineer can now regulate is the duration of the noise.
Additionally, in junction with the above, the older locomotives had far less sound insulation in the cab. So if the engineer did not like the noise, he could pull the lever with less effort, causing the horn to be less loud. The new locomotives are nicely sound-proofed, and the horn is nowhere nearly as loud in the cab, so the engineer may not be aware how much noise he is actually making.
Sometimes the experience of an engineer at a particular crossing might affect how vigorously the engineer sounds the horn. Crossings with a dangerous arrangement (truck traffic, visibility, insufficient or no gates, etc) might cause an engineer to issue as much warning as he can; conversely, a quiet crossing in the country with lots of visibility might not require such an enthusiastic horn sounding.
As for how effective the horns are in saving lives, I can say for Europe, there are few - if any - countries that have trains sound horns at level crossings. As for Holland, I know engineers only use their horns when they feel someone is too close to the tracks (ie. station platforms) and the train goes by at track speed.
Although we have very few crossings with nothing more than crossing bucks, the ones we do have trains don’t sound their horns… People need to(and most of the time do) look out for train themselves when using such crossings.
It maybe mentality that justifies sounding horns over at your end, as I (and I am sure most Dutch would agree) cannot understand the total disrespect for trains some people in the US display in the stories I see on this site - among others - and end up dead or seriously injured. We are tought as children that railroad property is a dangerous and illegal place to be, sometimes with graphic images to support the warnings not to mess with trains…
mookie look up fostoria train whistles and how much it would cost to make the crossings silent. thats a good chunk of change.besides with cell phones and jrs $5000 stereo in the car that makes crossings even more dangerous.
A few years ago, I used to hear several of the BNSF trains whistling a few miles from where I live with a very deep, soft, haunting horn sound. All I can say is that it was, in musical terms, a very minor chord. It almost reminded me of the “hoo” sound that a owl makes in the wee hours of the morning. I thought that was the classiest air horn sound that I ever heard, but it disappeard for some reason.
I would speculate, that behind all the horn rule-making, there is a belief that horns should be annoying in order to get people’s attention. And, of course, this is in conflict with people who do not need to have their attention gotten by the horn.
The LRT in Minneapolis has a horn sound that is identical to the abovementioned BNSF sound that disappeared. Except that the LRT horns are very quiet, in addition to sounding like an owl. Sitting in the car, with the windows up, alongside of a whistling LRT train 200 feet away, you can hardly hear the horn. A person could probably shout louder than the LRT horn.
As was pointed out in the Hancock Air Whistle thread - the old single-note horns began to be a problem as cars got windows and then rolled them up. A loud, discordant five-chime whistle tends to cut through the clutter better.
Fire trucks tend to favor the Grover “Stutter Tone” horn - very distinctive as compared to the “traditional” truck horn. Same reason.
We nearly had a grade crossing accident last year when a pickup started across the tracks ahead of us. Fortunately he backed off the tracks before we slid past him (we were in emergency). He complained that we weren’t sounding the horn. Everyone on the train had heard it, but it’s an “original equipment” for a 1950 RS-3 - single note “blatter.” He may not have heard it, in part because that’s not what he’s learned to listen for…
I think we should design air horns to mimick the sound of the old steam whistles. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night hearing that lonesome whistle trailing off into the distance.
What I know as a Paramedic, is that our sirens on our ambulances are at a high pitch, with 200 watt speakers, with different pitches to get the publics attention on the road, for safety as to let them know at a higher rate of speed we will be moving around them to get by. It would appear in our society with all of the distractions that are out there (Cell phones, ear drum breaking stereos and any other distractions in the car), that it is this way to maximize the effect of getting the publics attention. As the same for the trains, most people go over train tracks on a daily basis unaware that they are even passing them, and with all of the distractions, it seems that the horns must be much louder and a higher pitch to get the drivers attention. As far as the time on the horn, I am sure it is at the engineers judgement depending on the crossing, as too how long he stays on the horn.
I watched a driver go crashing right through the crossing gate at a 4 lane railroad crossing, not paying attention while driving, (Luckely for her, the train had just passed by 10 sec or so), and we turned around (In our ambulance), to see her condition…scared to death of course…but otherwise ok.
I live at least 1 mile from the closest rail crossing, and I hear the horn 4 times a day…at 11:00 pm at night and 5:30am, and yes, sometimes it is a “pain” to hear it when I am trying to sleep, but it is a better sound to know that hopefully I won’t be going to any of the 4 crossings in my rescue district to pick up someone who has got run over by a train.
The horn’s loudness is regulated by the FRA. I don’t have the CD49 Part in front of me…but it has to be such a decibel level at such a distance.
Previously, the horns were controlled with a feather valve, that allowed the engineer to vary the tone and intensity of the horn. You could often tell the engineers apart, by the way they “played” the horn.
Today, it’s a push button and relay, so all the horns sound at the same intensity. I suspect this has much to do with avoiding FRA fines, as to public safety.
As to quite zones, the last figures I heard for making a crossing FRA “quite zone” compliant was close to $250,000.
Some truly unique ideas…More so they seem to work!
Maybe we should export to the Continent a plethora of LAWYERS… To enlighten them, and explain to the Europeans what rights they have, dead or alive; how common sense and stupidity can get their attorneys, and them[ or their heirs] wealthy.
Part of that is due to the fact that Europeans view trains as part of their public transportation system, in that most of you guys have ridden trains to and from either work or for pleasure/travel, and have a first hand up close appreciation of how fast a train can move.
Most Americans have never been closer to a train that the gates at the street crossings…they don’t, as a rule, ride trains and have little exposure to them at station platforms and such.
Where Europeans have a first hand personal exposure to trains, Americans don’t, and tend to forget about them and their presence, until the gates come down.
Keep in mind most public safety laws here are written to the lowest common denominator, for the dumbest of the dumb, so the idea of personal responsibility has, for the most part, ceased to exist.
In other words, is would seem we are so stupid as to not know that walking or driving in front of moving trains is a dangerous thing to do, so our governments, local, state and Federal, has had to make laws and rules in regards to that.
1: if a firetruck, police car or ambulance is anywhere near me, I want to know about it. Ergo sirens are ok. And since I live next door to a fire station, I hear ALL the sirens. They still aren’t as bad as the new train horns.
2: We are looking like an irresponsible country since we can stay out of the way of most trucks, ships and people driving while on a cell phone, but we can’t be trusted to stay out of the way of a train without it blasting our ears off. Shame on us!
3: The railroad regulators increase the volume of the horn and make it a decibel that will sever the ears off a stone staute - so the cities come along and put up mandated items and make it a silent zone.
Is this how we spell oxymoron?
And does anyone have a clue if we have saved more lives with the increase in noise pollution?
And we could discuss for pages how we arrived at that point, which would be interesting, but not very productive. We need to focus on how to proceed from here. Better crossing protection is one approach.
However, my goal is to recognize as policy that grade crossings are a compromise to public safety and that they need to go away. The feds, the states, the local governments, and the RRs need to stop pointing fingers at each other about whose responsibility it is and begin cooperating to achieve that goal.
Many people object about the cost. But what is the cost of a family wiped out at a grade crossing? What is the cost of the emotional effects on the train crew? I don’t think we can put numbers on things like these. Eliminating RR grade crossings is the right thing to do. We are a big, powerful civilization with lots of technology. We should just do it.
Plus, if we could ever get the insurance companies (ours and the RRs’) to buy in, maybe lower insurance rates could cover some of the costs of the overpasses, underpasses, and detours.
Finally, we should apply improved crossing protection to the ones that we absolutely can’t eliminate.
Mookie, you got there ahead of me. I have no idea whether or not horns decrease accidents. Because I have been focused on the crossings and thinking that the horn blowing will go away when the crossings go away, I never looked into that.
I think you have the cusp of it pretty well down. But you have to realize that the decible level coming directly out of the horn is not the way the specification is written. they want 100 (I think it is 100) decibles at the crossing, when the train is X feet away from the crossing.
So it has to be built with a margin of error, for ambient noises, weather, lineside accoustics, and other variables. That horn might blare at 128 decibles, just to assure it can meet the minimum spec at distance
Some of the more clever ideas about crossing noise mitigation involve placing 100 decible horns on poles at the crossing, and having them activated with the track circuit. which has been met with very favorable line side resident response.
Of course, that’s a two edged sword. If the pole mounted horns cause the engineers to become complacent, and then the pole mounted horns fail to operate, then you have a liability exposure for the railroad.
Don’t blow the proper road crossing horn signal in the US and have an incident and see how quickly the lawyers register in their lawsuits. Only in legally designated ‘Quiet Zones’ is it permissible not to sound the proper warning. Localities must jump through a number of bells, whistles and hoops in order to be able to legally designate a ‘Quiet Zone’.