Just like almost everything else in railroading the routine backup moves had their own set of procedures to be followed. The engineer would have his visual cues of when to apply power and when to decrease power in accordance with the train size of the move he was making - the other thing to remember - RADIOS DID NOT EXIST, so car counts weren’t available to the man controlling the locomotive throttle.
Railroading without radios is totally foreign to current railroaders.
Many of them did. We’ve had threads about the A-220 and similar ‘honkers’ (listen to any cut of a GG1 that uses the horn for the idea).
As I’ve noted, I spent my early years close to the Erie (became Erie Lackawanna) Northern Branch, which had only just become equipped with RS2s/3s that had this kind of single-note horn. That was how I thought locomotives were “supposed” to sound for many childhood years. They were not so much a ‘blat’ (like truck air horns) as a kind of “HAAAAAMP!” sound; I never objected to the sound of this kind of horn on GG1s at high speed.
On the other hand, once we moved to the East Hill on the Palisades in the mid-1960s, I could hear the three-note chime horns on the NYC West Shore all through the night, and while they might not have all the quilling ‘expression playing’ steam whistles did, they were just as emotionally evocative – ‘real’ railroading instead of plain old commuter stuff.
GCOR calls them whistle signals.
Jeff
NORAC is interesting. It calls them “whistle or horn signals” in most places (e.g., Rule 19) but then refers to the actual procedure only as ‘whistling’. One piece of wording is interesting:
In the definitions section, for “quiet zone”, only the word ‘horn’ is used, which I assumed to be related to a formal or perhaps legal definition (remember that 49 CFR Part 222 is called by the FRA the “Train Horn Rule”, and by CSX the “Locomotive Horn Rule”)
I have to wonder, a bit tongue in cheek, what the official word for horn use that corresponds to ‘whistling’ might be…
Fortunately “tweet” is taken…
I would formally like to nominate Wanswheel’s posting above as “The Photo of the Year”…cannot see this being topped…likely ever!
Also well aware that the Milwaukee built a lot of their equipment, from rolling stock to passenger cars, and they all had their own distinctive look but this arrangement/creation is amazing.
“Hey, we’ve got a crossing coming up. Get the horns out of the lounge car…”
This reminds me of how Pullman Conductor Moedinger spent part of Christmas Day, 1945–riding in the engineer’s seat of a Milwaukee Road electric locomotive while the engineer and fireman got the steam generator going so that the homeward-bound servicemen would not freeze. He blew for some crossings that the engineer had forgotten about, as well as for places where rabbits jumped across the track.
Whew! It is well that I proofread what I just wrote–among other interesting things, my fingers at first failed to put the “t” in rabbits."
And on the scanner I have heard references to “whistling off” (departing).
And further on a point made above, the Milwaukee Road 4-8-4 #261 has two different steam whistles and an air horn. I am told that in regular service it almost always used the air horn at crossings, etc. Now and then they use it (the air horn that is) in excursion service.
Dave Nelson
Darned clergymen…
Not as much of a mistake as you think! Those rabbis were probably avoiding paying rail fare by utilizing קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶךְin a more direct line…
Doesn’t Portland’s GS-4 4449 have a single note air horn as well as a steam boat whistle ?
Yes it does, and it’s been said that Doyle McCormick hates it.
So does the CROR (Canadian rules), but horn is acceptable too apparently. Excerpt from Rule 14:
Note:
Just as a note: the Niagaras weren’t built with them (and the C1a Duplex wasn’t specified with one, either). The ‘pneuphonic’ horns were applied at quarterly inspections in 1947 (5550, the S2a, got its horn in March).
There’s an appreciable saving of heat and water if there’s a need to blow for many grade crossings at high speed…
I wonder if those guys were salaried or paid by the hour?
Or the honk?
I forget where I read this, but supposedly the air horns were installed on the GS’s since they ran along the California coast and the sound from air horns was distorted less by the frequent fogs along the route than steam whistles were.
It does sound plausible. Mariners will tell you fog does distort conventional whistles making it difficult to tell just where the sound is coming from, it’s one of the reasons fog was the most hated navigational hazard in the pre-radar days.
Doesn’t explain why the NYC put air horns on the Niagaras though. Just to be modern and “cool?” Although RME’s suggestion of saving steam, heat, and water does make sense.
In the early fall, rivers that have accumulated Summer’s heat all summer, when the early cold snaps come along generate some severe fog events throughout the valleys that the rivers occupy. NYC prided itself in being ‘the Water Level Route’ - being water level it occupied many river valleys that would become fog filled.
That makes sense too.