As a BNSF grainer went by this morning, it used an uncommon horn pattern at the closest crossing. It didn’t use usual long-short-long-long. It simply sounded like looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong, all the way through the crossing. A mile down the road at the next crossing, same thing.
Broken horn? I imagine they’ll have the problem until they get to a shop that can fix it. If the horn totally weirs out on them or simply stops working, is the train then dead on the line?
Depending on how much piping there is between the horn valve and the horn itself, the horn may continue to sound after the valve is closed. Been there. All that piping acts as a reservoir.
The engineer may have only briefly released the handle between blasts, not allowing enough time for the horn to stop sounding before hitting it with air again. Considering where the horn is located on most modern locomotives (back on the carbody), he may not have realized what he was actually doing. He “pulled” the proper sequence, but the physics of the system didn’t recreate what he thought he did.
Usually the grade crossing sequence is Long-Long-Short-Long instead. See: http://trn.trains.com/en/Railroad%20Reference/ABCs%20of%20Railroading/2006/05/Whistle%20signals.aspx “- - o - Approaching public grade crossing.”
Usually the railroad’s General Rules and/ or the FRA’s rules will allow the train to proceed to its terminal, but with stopping and flagging at the crossings instead:
From http://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0104 (emphasis added - PDN):
Under the Train Horn Rule (49 CFR Part 222), locomotive engineers must begin to sound train horns at least 15 seconds, and no more than 20 seconds, in advance of all public grade crossings.
If a train is traveling faster than 60 mph, engineers will not sound the horn until it is within ¼ mile of the crossing, even if the advance warning is less than 15 seconds.
There is a “good faith” exception for locations where engineers can’t precisely estimate their arrival at a crossing and begin to sound the horn no more than 25 seconds before arriving a
Three, ok, four thoughts leap to mind…
1, the engineer saw something or someone at or near the crossing that he was concerned about and wanted to make sure who/ what that was saw and noticed him and the train.
2, The engineer saw there was multiple crossings, he was moving quickly, decided one long solid blow was the best course of action to make sure everyone near knew about his trains presence.
The engineer was lazy/tired and screwed up his timing, then decided to just keep blowing the horn…(rule says the horn must be sounding when the locomotive enters the crossing) and this might have just been his way of making sure.
Engineer just didn’t care about using the proper signal.
We have a BNSF engineer who comes through my neighborhood around 1 am every day, some of the houses are less than 100 feet from the crossing and tracks, there are 3 crossings within a mile of each other…he gives tiny little beeps and creeps up on the crossings with the bell coming on at the last second, because he doesn’t want to wake the folks up.
All three crossing have excellent sight lines to both sides, he can see any traffic, and that late there is none.
You know when he is off or on his off days, the relief engineer sounds the proper crossing signal loud and proud.
All the dogs in the neighborhood notice tooo!
Houston Ed - for years, we had his evil brother. I am thinking a yard engine (maybe an old S10 or S15) - he would start around 1 am, heading east to the shops and he would just keep hitting the whistle once, pause, once, pause, once, pause until he got through what was then the old depot and UNL. He was the only one I heard do that.
They got rid of the horns, the S10 & S15 and probably sold the old engineer with them!
I know of a small community (on the old Erie) that has something like six or seven crossings in fairly short order. The tracks also cross the river on an old truss bridge, and right after the bridge (NB) is a fairly sharp curve.
At 6AM on a Sunday Morning (when one local usually comes through), the crews are usually pretty gentle with the horn. Of course, rumbling across that bridge, together with the squealing brought on by the sharp curve, means they can’t exactly sneak through town.
A sluggish magnet valve. Even though the engineer was pressing the button correctly, the magnet valve was probably a little sticky. (assuming its a clean cab locomotive with buttons for the bell/horn) If its an older type with a Salem horn valve it might be a worn valve seat or a lot of piping from the valve to the horn causing sluggish sounding horns.
Last winter I had my horns freeze a few times in plow service. Had to climb up and thaw them with fusees.
Randy
Back in the 1950’s, on Friday nights, Dad use to watch the “Friday Night Fights” – A boxing program on TV that came on right after the nightly news.
It also so happened that a passenger train left Union Station (Indianapolis, IN) a few minutes after that, headed northeast on tracks (New York Central?) that paralleled Massachusetts Ave. out of town.
I don’t know why, but that train could be heard at full volume leaving Union Station downtown, over a mile to the west, all the way out to about 4 blocks north of where we lived and for another couple of miles on further east.
It was always a Steam Locomotive and the whistle was blown in a series of long WOOOoooOOOooo’s of 10 seconds duration, separated by only a half second, THE WHOLE WAY… and poor Dad could not hear the blow-by-blow description of the fight. He would have the TV volume turned up (as loud as Mom would let him, since us kids were in bed by then) and he would be on the edge of the chair that was closest to the TV and MAD AS A HORNET! (and he was seldom mad at all!)
Until his death in the 70’s, if someone mentioned train whistles or horns, he would complain about that Engineer back in the 1950’s!
Some of our engines have a “delay” of a couple seconds between when the button is pushed/released for the horn to respond.
Sometimes those magnet valves also freeze up in cold weather. I had one once (very cold night) that all you heard in the cab was air blowing under the cab when the button was pushed. We turned the main cab heater and both sidewall heaters on high. The cab got really hot, but radiated enough heat under the cab that the horn started working again. A month or two back, a long pool had their horn stick on about 30 miles west of Boone. They had to put up with that until they reached Boone and was able to have the MIC come out, with a step ladder, to access the compartment under the cab where the valve was located.
Jeff
Espee: Our P-3(was it R2?) standard horn set since somewhere in the 1950’s, wouldn’t, didn’t, or couldn’t stop sounding seconds after closing the air supply valve (letting go of the whistle cord).
Hardly all of them, though a lot.
I’d write on the locomotive inspection report at the end of a trip: “horn won’t sound Rule 14m, sounds after closing valve”
The rule: (short sounds repeated) approaching anyone on or near the track, as a warning.)
Does some one know why the horns sounded after the whistle cord was released?
Musicologists; Was the Nathan P3 the notes of the PRR’sy whistle?
My only experience with a long horn came when I was riding the engine of IC’s #1 from Memphis to Grenada (49 years ago). I was handling the horn as long as I could distinguish between the crossing signals and the mile posts (they had the same shape). When we stopped halfway to Grenada for passengers, the conductor gave the signal to proceed, using the communicating whistle air line. However, he did not let enough time lapse between the two shorts for them to be distinct, and the engineer had to tell me to give the conductor two shorts on the horn.
As to a proper signal before each crossing, it was impossible to make it in some towns, for the crossings were too close together–so I used the last blast for one crossing as the first blast for the next crossing; the engineer did not take issue with my method.
My riding the engine was with the blessing of the Tennessee Division superintendent.
They must have swapped things out at the grain load out. When the train came through this evening, the #2 engine from earlier was leading.