I did some train watching today and one of the trains had a slight problem. About a mile down the line from where I was watching, the horn got stuck on and it kept on blaring all the way past where I was watching and beyond. Listening to the scanner, the engineer asked the dispatcher how in the heck he was supposed to get the thing to stop honking. About that time the train came by so I got out of the car and didn’t hear how to make it stop.
So, how does a person get a train horn to stop honking if it is stuck? Also, what might have caused it to get stuck in the on position in the first place?
Although I’m sure the crew didn’t find it very funny, it did brighten my day, just because I’ve never seen or even heard of such a thing happening before.
I heard the same thing happen in Atlanta traffic with a semi-truck. When the driver was blowing the horn the cord broke and it was stuck in that position. Never heard of it happening with a train. Interesting…
I would think, beyond having super earplugs and getting close to hit it with something, you would have to shut the unit off, therefore killing the air pressure.
there are horn cut outs located either in the cab or in the engin room of the long hood depending on the make and model of the locomotive. as far as how it got stuck in the first place…if it was a wide body loco with the push button for the horn… they can stick from time to time… infact i had a brand new GE one time as my leader…and the horn button assembly acutly came out of the desktop… well i was able to get the button back in…but when i smashed it home to get into place…it became stuck and the horn was blasting… i stoped the train…the conductor ran out the back door and cut the horn out at the cutout and we mangaged to get the button unstuck so it would shut off and only blow when the button was pushed…
(1) Look for the breaker switches on the back wall of the cab.
(2) We are going to be asking you the same thing if we get more than 6 inches of snow on Thursday (weather-liars predicting 4 to 18 inches now).[;)]…Copcar will now be stranded in Chicago, unable to return to the Peoples Republic of Boulder…
That’s okay, MC–we’ll keep him here. You’d be welcome, too, if you can get out. ________________________________________________________________________ Our weather’s still pretty balmy, though it will cool off toward the weekend, and there could be some snow to welcome 2007. ________________________________________________________________________ Back to the original subject, I’m glad they have cutoff valves for the horns nowadays! The engines I was most familiar with had the rope tied directly to the valve, which was directly below the horn on the cab roof. Of course, you knew right where the problem was, if something would go awry, but I never knew if there was a way to cut off the air supply.
Had that happen on our truck at work. I just opened the hood and cut the airhose supplying it. What happened was that the snow shorted out the supply wires to the swtich and it woulnd’t shut off the air flow to the horn.
On a somewhat related note but completely off topic… It was almost 50 degrees here today, melted offf most of the snow left on the roads. So you will have a couple good warm days to melt it all off soon…
As far as I could tell on the scanner, they got it fixed pretty fast after stopping, but it was still quite the thing to hear as it went by.
Mudchicken - The weather machine is still at the setting it was at when Denver got dumped on before, so you may very well be in for it again. [;)]
This upcoming system is looking a bit more favorable for us here in Omaha than the last one. I still don’t think we’ll get a ton of snow, but we should at least see an inch or two. A whole lot of rain looks like a better bet.
So it could be like a Little Miss sunshine? anyone see that movie? with the horn and the VW bus? Could u image a train crossing the country going across the country with the horn going off in little intervals ever few minutes?
Some 70 MACS have the horn cut off on the dash to the left, some have them on the pipe going to the horn back in the hood section.My all time favorite is the new GE models that have them on the engineer side under the frame. PITA to get to cause you have to stop climb down and then find it.
There are some that have signs pointing them out ( Horn cut out valve etc etc)But its a simple fix when you find it. Problem is the crossings down the line you have to deal with.
The past 12 months also had several reports of frustrated neighbors having fun with each other.
The Grand Kankakee Hunt Club near Hanna reported to the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Department a neighbor was driving away customers by blasting a train horn during the grand opening of their skeet-shooting range in June.
A week before the incident, neighbors protested the club’s new shooting range because of the potential noise that could come from the shooting.
Neighbor Sharon Doms told LaPorte County deputies she was simply using the train horns to scare a groundhog out of her garage
A reason not to use the sequencer on the units haha. CN has told us not to use the sequencer on certain series of locomotives cause it doesn’t work right. I am not sure if they got it fixed yet or not.
Just like the M-2 before they fixed it … the bell stayed on for 30 seconds after the horn stopped and you couldnt do anything.