A railroad runs smack dab through the middle of our bustling burg— as it does many cities west of the Mississippi. In our town the tracks run one block west of the main street, on a parallel side street, and for the full length of town. My brother from the big city thinks it’s neat, and quaint, that we can hear the train whistle several miles—several , several miles—in each direction as the train rolls through town, whistling away, as it does, many, many times a day.
And night. And early morning.
The train, of course, goes through town in different directions, though, again, of course, not at the same time. Recently, at 5 a.m., my head on the pillow, I heard the train whistle far away, miles away, on the south end of town, coming north, where I live, a full mile west of the tracks.
Curiously, on that early morning it seemed as if the train whistle kept blasting, and blasting, from one end of the town to the other, which takes ten minutes or better for our peaceable town of 170,000 souls,
Laying in bed, at five in the morning, listening to the train whistle, I couldn’t help but think it mist be some young Turk, there on the whistle, chortling and chortling as he kept the whistle blowing—short and long bursts—all through town, from one end to the other. “If I have to be up and working, you folks should too,” was what I assumed his motivation was.
As an old guy, here in town for a hundred years or so. I’m used to the train whistle, and even enjoy it. But this seemed extreme. Even intentional: uninterrupted train whistles, from one end of town to the other.
So that morning, over coffee, I found myself googling, “train whistle regulations.” This is what I found:
By law, a train must blow its whistle at least 15 seconds, but not more than 20 seconds, before coming to a “public grade crossing.” Our town, plotted on wide open prairies, a mere 160 years ago, has a “public grade crossing” every mile, on the dot.
The train whistle regulations get even more specific:
The whistle blower is required to blow his whistle with the standardized patten of two long blasts, one short blast, and then another long blast, until the lead locomotive is actually in the intersection. Here’s the catch: the regulations do not specify how long a long blast is, or how short a short blast is. So, depending on how fast the train is going, it could be –would be, was—perfectly legal for the young Turk to blow his damned whistle from one end of town to the other. So it goes.
After listening to train whistles in this town for over half a century, I know that we have both “minimalists” and “maximalists” when it comes to train whistle blowing. So again, the young guy (it had to be a young guy, yes?) blasting his train whistle from one end of town to the other at five in the morning was probably within his legal boundaries. Still…
Life is too short for such complaints, I know. The benefits of living in a modern industrial sociry—chocolates on demand, hot showers and coffee in the morning, and bananas in every season—far outweigh the downside. And those bananas, chocolates and coffee probably had their time in train rides. Still . . .
We are still learning, here in our modern industrial societies, to be sensitive and compassionate to each other in ways that go beyond legal requirements. In fact, this is ideally how legal requirements evolve—learning how to more gracefully live with each other, night and day, and early in the morning.
As an old guy, I’ve also learned a few tricks on how to go back to sleep when awakened too early. The tricks work, eight times out of ten.
Sometimes, though, I just stay awake, wondering what the rules are.
Love this just love it!!
Love the train whistles early in the morning. It reminds me of being a kid and growing up in Fort Collins.