8:23:12 Train Whistles in the Night

With steam-powered locomotives gone, trains no longer whistle in the night. No steam under pressure to blow the whistle. Instead, modern diesel locomotives have compressed-air air horns, a sound in the night possibly as evocative as the train whistle remembered in song.

While horns serve to warn any man or beast on the tracks ahead a train is coming, we tend to associate train horns with something else. Surely we hear that plaintive horn and think--especially at night--of other unknown places in this vast country. That train might be headed to one.

[night train]I've always had pleasant associations with train horns. Partly because my paternal grandfather was a locomotive engineer, as were his father and several uncles too. Those two generations take in a lot of railroad history, including the shift from steam to diesel locomotives.

I also associate preemptive urgency with train horns. Trains carry America's wealth, whether coal, livestock, grain, or manufactured goods. Everything moves by freight trains. Timely delivery matters and freight stops for nothing. Hence crossing barriers for automotive and truck traffic. Or why even Amtrak passenger trains, shunted to a side spur, make way for a Time-Is-Money freight train.

It goes without saying freight trains run all hours of the day. For me, it is those night passages, the short blasts from the air horns, the inevitably countless clickety-clacks that follow with the aching squeal of rolling steel wheels I find most evocative. Especially, when heard from one's bedroom late at night through an open window, when the cool night air has to travel but a few miles to carry the sounds of another freight train headed out under the cover of darkness.

Perhaps on one occasion or another, these freight train horn blasts were annoying, keeping me awake. But I soon remembered America's work was being done, even as I slept. So the muted train horn--I'm hearing one as I type this--reassures us much is working well in our land. (If it weren't, and I think back to the haunting absence of noisy jets at airports right after 9/11, then we'd have true problems.)

At times, train horns can be like a nighttime lullaby. When I lived in California, I had similar feelings toward the sound of another nocturnal warning: Fog would sweep into the bay, and fog horns began their ceaseless warning to ships at sea. But not everyone lives by the Pacific, and so those of us, inland, must take similar comfort from freight trains and their horns in the night.



Read more ...
(click to enlarge image)

The Cat at Light's End

Read Charlie Dickinson's story collection, The Cat at Light's End, as an ebook in these downloadable formats:

.mobi (Kindle)
.epub (most other readers)
.pdf (for PCs)



more posts

7:25:13 Le Havre by Kaurismaki
7:20:13 This Ain't California
6:27:13 The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, a book review
5.29.13 My Linux (Mis)Adventures
5.25.13 Southern Cross the Dog, a book review
5.5.13 Russian Tumbleweed
4:16:13 "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster
3.26.13 Camera-rama
3.25.13 Moore's Law
3:13:13 Grocery Shopping 
2:28:13 Razor Blade in Moonlight
1:27:13 Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design, a book review
1:6:13 Alleys
12:9:12 White Bread, a book review
12:4:12 Update on Old-School Shaving
11:12:12 Ten Great Buys at Dollar Tree
11:6:12 My New Russian Camera
10:29:12 Leaf Day
10:2:12 The Russian Navy in New York?
9:21:12 The Righteous Mind, a book review
9:14:12 Revolution, 1989, a book review
8:23:12 Train Whistles in the Night
8:2:12 Why I've Stockpiled Light Bulbs
7:22:12 Old-School Shaving
7:16:12 Злектроника МК-52, computer de minimus
7:4:12 Ivan's Childhood by Tarkovsky
6:21:12 The Unabomber, a modern Thoreau?
6:12:12 Do the gods exist?
6:7:12 My "Retail Therapy"
5:28:12 On Taxes, We Should Go Green
5:17:12 Portland's Trash
5:6:12 The Toaster Project, a book review
4:24:12 No Seconds
4:12:12 Portland's Runaway Utility Bill
4:8:12 The Repossession, a book review
3:30:12 How I Got Published in Mississippi Review
3:18:12 Rothko
3:9:12 The End of Money, a book review
3:1:12 gutenberg.org
2:18:12 Beauty Plus Pity, a book review
2:5:12 Kirk's Castile Soap
1:29:12 Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer, a book review
1:22:12 Thirst, a book review
1:17:12 My IBM ThinkPad 1999-2012
1:11:12 String Beans
12:22:11 Spiritual TMJ
12:16:11 1Q84, a book review
12:11:11 How Portland Became Portlandia
12:1:11 The Fixie
11:20:11 Camus' Insight
11:13:11 Old & Worthy
11:7:11 Life Is Tragic
10:31:11 A Matter of Death and Life, a book review
10:25:11 Dead Letter, Email Fatigue
10:18:11 Reinventing Collapse, a book review
10:11:11 Rereading Pirsig
10:1:11 The Sisters Brothers, a book review
9:26:11 The Great Stagnation, a book review
9:16:11 Coffee, The Affordable Luxury
9:12:11 The Genius of Value
9:5:11 Death and the Penguin, a book review

home