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Train Crossing Horn
Ambrose
Member Posts: 3,208 ✭✭✭✭
There's a track a quarter mile from me and when the train approaches a crossing the horn blast is 2 longs, a short, and another long. Is that Morse code for something, or tradition, or what?!
Comments
Train horns must be sounded in a standardized pattern of 2 long, 1 short, and 1 long blasts. The pattern must be repeated or prolonged until the lead locomotive or lead cab car occupies the grade crossing. The rule does not stipulate the durations of long and short blasts. The maximum volume level for the train horn is 110 decibels, and the minimum sound level is 96 decibels.
https://railroads.dot.gov/railroad-safety/divisions/highway-rail-crossing-and-trespasser-programs/train-horn-rulequiet-zones#:~:text=Train%20Horn%20Requirements&text=Train%20horns%20must%20be%20sounded,short%2C%20and%201%20long%20blasts.
Approaching public grade crossing. -- -- o -- It is a safety rule and is required.
Before I retired from the railroad they had changed the rule, you were to start the whistle 20 seconds before the crossing and to continue the whistle until over the crossing. Maybe you have seen some signs along the side of the tracks with a W on it, that tells you there is a crossing coming up.
1 long blast means set the air, apply the brakes. 2 short blasts your starting to pull, release the brakes. 3 short blast your backing up.
This is the short version. It is to notify you that, if you attempt to cross these tracks at this moment, you will be missing parts of your body that even the best surgeons can't fix!!!!
We live about a mile from a crossing 2 sets of tracks East /West and that one set NW to SE that's seldom used and we hear most of the trains depending on the wind
The same tracks I had a great uncle and aunt who lived about 25 feet from the crossing one of ther sons still does for as long as Iran remember its actually a small village with several hundred peope living with in blocks of the tracks way back when it was a busy lille place had a RR switch tower . a grainery several stores and bars all long gone
Any way They rold me afer a time you sleep right on thru the train horns do not even disturb you you become immune basicly to all the noise
Side note It's a rail fan photo shoot area due to all the trains that pass thru
Walter Moe is correct, at least that is the way it is done on the NS.
When iwas a kid on my grandpa's farm in West Virginia, I could hear the train whistle as it entered the Big Bend tunnel near Hinton, WV.
That was the tunnel that the legend John Henry out worked the steam drill.
The tunnel is 12 miles from Grandpa's old farm.
I can tell a new hire by the way they blow the horn. They lay on it with no mercy. An old fossil will just give it the minimal.