Why does that train horn sound for over an hour some nights?

Ok, granted, it’s 3am & I’m a little desperate. The train is a fact of life, but why does the horn sound for 90+ minutes some nights? It’s like a phone’s busy signal (anyone remember land lines?)- it’s consistent. The train is not moving, as far as I can tell. The horn noise does not fade in or off, it just starts, continues, stops.

So. While I lay here & listen & wish the train would find some lemmings to follow, what is it ACTUALLY doing?!

(The closest “horn translation” I found was that the flagman may approach from the east & south. Um, what?)

Is it positively a train horn? The warning signals (of a train approaching, triggered by the track gang’s sentinel person) I hear at times when a track gang is working on the railway line passing where I live are somewhat similar to the OP’s description.

Whatever it is, it’s not a train horn.

OP, where do you live? IF it is train horns you hear, they are blown at street crossings and such. Are there industrial tracks near you where they switch rail cars in and out? They might be crossing Elm Street or whatever multiple times as they go back and forth. Just a blind theory.

We used to live within earshot of what was called “the biggest switching yard west of the Missisippi” - and while we could hear it from time to time, I don’t recall it every being annoying on the OP’s scale. (Well, it did blow up spectacularly in the 1970s, but I thought that was fun at the time.)

An approximation of where the OP lives would help resolve the question.

I once lived next to a hump yard … you’ll get used to it eventually …

Get used to 90 minutes of straight horn blowing from a stationary train?

Something is not right here, I can’t see what that horn blowing would accomplish. I wonder if a different noise is being mistaken for a train horn?

24/7 … horns, whistles, squealing brakes, cars smashing into one another … 24/7.

So used to it when the railroad employees went on strike I couldn’t get to sleep.

My thoughts exactly.

The OP likened it to a busy signal; a continuous repetitive pattern for 90 minutes. My guess would either be some type of process malfunction or evacuation alarm at a distant factory or, maybe a burglar alarm closer in. Or the apartment next door left their phone off the hook. Or the OP has auditory hallucinations.

When I was a kid we lived about 4 miles across open terrain from a large sewage treatment plant. Upwind, thankfully. They had some ungodly loud horns that would blow if something went wrong. Which it did every year or so.

Wow, thanks guys. I’m in Salem, OR. I believe it’s a train horn- I could totally be wrong. An industrial alarm is a good thought, too. It’s not super loud, just consistent & I don’t ignore noises well.
Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

This is entirely possible!

Sounds like someone needs to be using some white noise in the bedroom.

Wait…I’m a little confused. Is it continuous, like a dial tone, or pulsed, like a busy signal, for 90 minutes?

Roseville Train Yard? My parents had their windows blown out from that one.

Kiramin, is there any chance that you can record the sound and post it online?

Just describe it to us using complete sentences. That would be hugely more than we have now.

FWIW, I live about a mile from train tracks and can hear the horn many nights. I believe after 10PM they don’t sound it at the smaller crossings. But a few nights in the past they have sounded it for a long time in the middle of the night. Usually I am only half-aware of it when it slightly wakes me, but some nights I haven’t even gone to bed yet.

If it’s continuous and repeats at regular intervals, I’d go with the alarm theory. We have a business near us who’s (whose?) alarm goes off at all hours, and stays on for long periods. I guess it could be confused with a train horn.

Yep. I was just over a mile away and was woken up by the first huge blast.

In 2000, when they were finding a bunch of UXO left over and buried in the yard, I was only a few hundred yards from the nighttime detonations. Fun.

When I hear it again, absolutely! It’s happened several times.