Train whistles ...
... is there any reason for trains to blow their whistles 4 times at each crossing ... even if they are a quarter mile a part? I live in a little town with 4 RR crossings within 2 miles. Every morning starting at 4am, we hear the trains blowing their whistles.
Two long blasts ... one short ... another long. Quiet for a minute or so and then two long, one short, one long. No one has been hit at those little dirt road crossings, so I guess it's working, but just wonder how they came up with that combination.
......Is there any reason I should have to hear train horns when there hasn't been any trains in this area in the last 100 years? There aren't even any tracks left. But yet, I hear train horns especially at night when it is quiet. Now I know it is some person that has a set mounted to his/her vehicle.
This answer is quite late in coming but here it is anyway. I was curious about the long and short horn blasts so went to the internet to find out what the signals meant. Before radio became common on trains the way to communicate to someone either on the train or off was via the horn. That usage is mostly a thing of the past except for when the train approaches a public road crossing. When doing that a train would (and still does) sound two long, one short, and one long blast on the horn. That is what you are hearing.
It is a federal law/requirement for the trains to blow their horns before each rail crossing, for safety sake to warn anyone about to cross that they are in the area. Even if no one is anywhere close, they still have to sound the horn, just in case. If they are seen and reported for not sounding the horn at EACH crossing, the railroad company can be heavily fined for it, and the one driving the train may well lose his job for it.
Last week I took the South Shore electrified commuter rail line from South Bend to Chicago. For the stretch between South Bend and Gary they put us on buses because of track work. At least 3 times we crossed the tracks that the train, and only that train would have run on, had it been in service. But each time the driver of the bus came to a full stop before crossing the track. I was not the only one aboard the bus that got a chuckle out of the useless stop.
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