There’s a recent thread dealing with how long it’s been since you rode a train.
This one is for those of us who don’t necessarily ride them regularly, but who have the occasion to hear them or see them often enough to matter.
The other morning I saw a train on a trestle not far from home and it struck me that I couldn’t remember seeing one on that same trestle in many years, if ever.
Now and then, if I’m outside or if the doors or windows are open, I can hear train whistles in the night.
There’s a major switching yard not too far as the crow flies from our place, but the terrain is such that it takes a quiet night and a lot of traffic on the yards for us to hear it.
Just curious how trains’ sights and sounds figure into your daily affairs.
This is a train town and there are four street crossings very close. The trains toot four times for each street and they really hang on that whistle. Years ago somebody took a pot shot at them in the night and I think the engineers have been holding a grudge ever since. I never understood why people would invest $300K IMPROVING a home not more than 100 feet from the tracks. During the recent recession, the mid night tooting was at a minimum. The economy must be improving.
Also, don’t get caught by the mid afternoon 120 car coal train. The street could be closed up for 15-20", police and ambulance included. Police issue tickets to enforce the 5" ordinance and then lose in court.
We are a mile and 3/4 from some RR tracks which run from Chicago to New Orleans. We used to get two trains a day; then after the Nissan plant was built in Canton we got about four trains a day. Then the economy got bad and we are back down to one or two daily trains.
If the wind is right and the Interstate noise isn’t too bad, I can hear them. Occasionally I’ll be coming through town and have to wait for one but that’s not very often.
I’m not a hard core train buff, but I enjoy visiting railroad museums. I love the lore and romance of train travel, not to mention the amazing heavy machinery and engineering involved. One train-related place I’d really like to see in person is the Goat Canyon Trestle.
I get 30 LIRR trains an hour outside my window every rush hour evening. It’s why we’re moving (I knew the tracks were there, I just had no idea how MANY trains there would be, nor that the 1/hr work trains are twenty times as loud, at least).
That’s a bit much. When I lived in Williamsburg, VA, you could hear a couple trains a day if the wind was right. That, and the wind carrying the music of the fife & drum corps, are my two favorite sound memories.
I drive by a train line every day. It is an overpass that leads to Union Station. We are about a mile or so from it but I never hear it with all the other noise in the area. It is an overpass so it doesn’t affect traffic in any way. I like seeing them and they make my son very happy.
There’s a few railroads nearby, but not close enough to be annoying. I actually love the sound of a distant train blowing its whistle in the middle of the night. Feels kinda… '80s Spielberg-y.
Al, would you mind expanding on this ordinance? I’m not sure what you’re referring to and I’m curious.
For myself, the Canadian National Railway runs through town, so I drive under it when I want to go just about anywhere, and I cross it when dropping off / picking up my son at day care (depending on the route I take). There’s one long train (70 cars? 80 cars?) that takes a good 10 minutes to pass, and I’ve gotten stuck at it a few times. There are at least 2-3 times a day when the train comes through, and it may be more.
^Many municipalities have longstanding ordinances forbidding railroads from blocking street crossings for more than five minutes. However, a number of court decisions have recently held that those ordinances are pre-empted by federal regulation of railroads. See, for example, City of Seattle v. Burlington Northern R.R. Co.
As for myself, I overlook the approaches to three of Chicago’s four commuter stations, and a couple of L lines. Plenty of trains to watch, and I like it that way.
Ah, thank you, Mr Downtown! Yeah, I have a hard time seeing applying that ordinance to trains. Not to mention the poor squaddie that has to get the train to pull over…
Such crossing-blockage ordinances (and even speed limits) were applied to trains perfectly well until the Federal Railroad Safety Authorization Act of 1994, or more particularly, the various court decisions with their curious findings that FRSA preempts such ordinances, despite a savings clause (49 U.S.C. § 20106) in FRSA seemingly intended to allow such local ordinances.
For those interested, here’s a summary of the situation in Illinois.
There is a local ordinance for 5" crossing blockages. C&X ignores them. They get fined. They refuse to pay and go to court. Court often rules in their favor and dismisses the cases.
I live next to a suburban station on a busy commuter line. So my home life is punctuated by the noise of trains braking and accelerating; I got to the point of mostly not noticing them within a few weeks of moving in. If I’m still awake when I hear the first train of the morning, I know I’ve stayed up too long.
Sometimes I’m woken up by freight trains that run through in the middle of the night; and on weekends I occasionally see steam-drawn tourist excursions.
when I was a kid, I loved trains. Now I hate them. My little town is divided in half by a very busy train track. About 50 every day, a long ones, that occasionally stop and therefore stop any car traffic going North/South. I have seen trains sit at the main crossing for over 30 minutes. I live on the south side of town, and most of the business district is on the north side. There is one underpass, on the extreme east side of town but that is several miles out of the way for the places I need to go. Bank, Wal-mart, restaurants. The local hospital is on the North side as well and I can imagine having a medical emergency and not being able to get to the hospital expeditiously.
What bugs me the most is when the Train crossing guards are down, and the train is stopped 50 yds from the crossing. And yes, the ubiquitous PSA announcements about not crossing the tracks when the guards are down! (why is it even possible to do it then?).
I do find it interesting that 99% of the trains travel eastbound in my town, and the ones that travel west are short trains (they are probably making a switch).
Just reading the rest of the thread about trains stopping on crossings. One day when I got home from work, I had an appointment on the other side of town. When i went to go across the track, the train was stopped. i took note of the box car number on the crossing. I decided to take the detour across town, got to my appointment a couple minutes late. Took care of my business in about 20 minutes and returned home. yep the train was still there, and had not moved. The same boxcar was still at the same spot. Took the detour again. I had no idea how long it was there before I got there and how long it was there after I saw. i would guess it totaled at least 30 minutes minimum.
I’ve been unable to avoid becoming a bit of a train spotter in the past few years as my short commute to work passes very busy tracks in any direction I drive. I was downtown walking around the weekend before the beginning of College World Series and heard the very distinctive sound of the old Union Pacific “Challenger” steam whistle. Now “that” is what a train should sound like…you forget how cool they sound until you hear them now and again. Turns out they parked the Challenger right next to the ballpark and visitors could walk right up to it and check it out.
There’s a train that goes through my town, not too far from my house. You can definitely hear it but since I’ve lived here 30+ years, I don’t think about it.
The train goes over (via bridge) the main route in town. The main route needed desperately to be widened but it couldn’t happen until the train track owners got on board and widened the bridge. That happened last year and it was pretty cool!
The train also goes across the second main route in town. I’ve never heard of anyone wanting to widen that route (although I find it terribly congested) but they did just start the process to either make the road go over the train or the train go over the road. I forget which.
I think that there has been more train traffic in the past 10 years than at any time before, so that’s why the call for a bridge, finally.
Oh yeah, and in 1987, a teen was killed driving across the tracks on her way home from school. The new bridge will be named in her honor.
I work practically right next to a busy freight line; we’re so close that meetings in the main building’s auditorium are often punctuated by the rumble of steel-on-steel. I was on my way home one afternoon a couple of months ago when I noticed a slow-moving freight with something vaguely familiar on one end passing through the station. I thought it was a Crocodile at first but soon realized that such a thing isn’t likely to be in the US and that line isn’t electric. A better view a few moments later provided the answer: it was an actual, in service, caboose!
Last February, I was visiting Houston, where there’s still a relatively large amount of train traffic. I remember there was one day I got stopped at three different crossings and I remarked that it had been a long time since I had been held up by three trains in the course of a single day.
Definitely true about the increase in traffic, particularly if you count commuter systems. Even San Diego has a commuter line along the coast which reaches as far north as Oceanside, which is also the southern terminus of L.A.'s Metrolink. I’m sure there are train buffs out there who have made the trip from L.A. to San Diego just by commuter rail. At one or two places one might have to wait an hour or two, but from glancing at the schedules it seems possible.
