Train whistle

“ At last, an unmistakable elasticity impregnates the place. A distant whistle is heard; it stirs one like the tap of a drum. The train is coming! One's pulse beats high as one moves into the press toward the doorway. ”

“ One whistle is small, and very shrill, to warn people on the line, and to tell people the train is coming. The other is a deep-toned booming whistle which tells of danger perhaps, and when blown means "Stop the train, there is obstruction in front."
"Crimea" is now ready. The engine-driver pulls open the regulator, and we glide back and are attached to the train. We have air-breaks worked on the engine, vacuum-breaks which can pull us up quickly, and when all the connections are made the "Flying Dutchman" is ready; he is harnessed to his eight coaches full of people—the solemn and sorry ”

“ As the train stops you drowse if you have been waking, and wake if you have been in a doze; but in any case you are aware of the locomotive hissing and coughing beyond the station, of flaring gas-jets, of clattering feet of passengers getting on and off; then of some one, conductor or station-master, walking the whole length of the train; and then you are aware of an insane satisfaction in renewed flight through the darkness. You think hazily of the folk in their beds in the town left behind, who stir uneasily at the sound of your train's departing whistle ”

“ I was beginning to feel a little better, when I remembered that I had never heard the whistle of the locomotive since we had started from Manlius station. That showed me that the engineer wasn't either drunk or mad, for in either case he would have blown his whistle about two-thirds of the time; there being nothing that a crazy man or a drunken engineer finds as soothing as a steam whistle. I couldn't explain our flying around curves and over level crossings without sounding the whistle, except on the theory that the engineer had dropped dead in his cab. ”

“ The whistle of the locomotive--which, by the way, is very much more melodious than the one in use in England, being softer, deeper, and reaching to a greater distance-the roll of the train into stations, the stop and the start, all become, as it were, blended into uneasy sleep, until daylight sets the darkey at his work of making up the sections. ”

“ Early in the morning of the second day, an engine, with a single private car attached, arrived at the station and side-tracked. At this sign that life had renewed in the dead roads, the whole army lined up beside the track.
But never did life renew so monstrously on a dead railroad as it did on those two roads. From the west came the whistle of a locomotive. It was coming in our direction, bound east. We were bound east. A stir of preparation ran down our ranks. The whistle tooted fast and furiously, and the train thundered at top speed. The hobo didn't live that could have boarded it. ”

“ Then a gruff voice yelled just beneath my window: "Let her go," and instantly our locomotive gave a whistle so piercing and continuous that all the occupants of our car sprang from their couches, and met in a demoralized group of multicolored pajamas in the corridor. What was it? Had the train been held up? Were we attacked? No; both the whistle and the pistol shots were merely Flagstaff's mode of giving an alarm of fire. ”

“ I tell you, and you can prove it for yourself if you will, that that train of mingled flat cars and coaches that goes tearing into the night, its engine whistle shrieking out its warning into the silent woods and echoing over the dull still lake, is the fastest train in the whole world. ”

“ The wave of a white flag by day, a white lamp by night, is railway language for “Yes,”—a sharp decisive whistle from the foremost guard,—whether the sound be heard above the hissing of the escaping steam or the motion only be perceived it matters not, the engine driver understands it,—up goes his regulator, on goes his steam, the fireman (who has freed his break as soon as the engine is ready for starting) looks to the rear of the train as it begins to move from the station. If the engine don’t “slip,” the regulator, further raised, admits more steam to the cylinder ”

“ It's 'cause a train can whistle and so can a boy," said the little chap with a laugh. "Isn't that a good riddle?"
"A train doesn't whistle," declared Russ. "It's only the engine that whistles. Isn't that so, Grandpa?"
"Well, the engine whistles, of course. But [Pg 68] the engine is the main part of the train. If it wasn't for the engine there wouldn't be any train, so I guess Laddie's riddle is all right there. A train-engine is like a boy, because it whistles. ”

“ When the electric bell is silent there is no train within half a mile and the crossing is safe; it is not safe while the bell is ringing. As it now stands the law usually provides that the prescribed signals, either bell or whistle, shall be given from the locomotive as it approaches the highway, and at a fixed distance from it. The signal, therefore, is given at a distance of several hundred yards, more or less, from the point of danger. ”

“ Sometimes a train rushes right through a station whistling all the time, and then you can notice the change from D sharp to D flat quite easily. Many people have thought that the train changed its whistle as it went through, but that is not the case, it keeps on whistling the same note all the time ”

“ Sometimes the engineer hooted and tooted the whistle. Sometimes the fireman rang the bell. Sometimes the open-and-shut of the steam hog’s nose choked and spit pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost. But no matter what happened to the whistle and the bell and the steam hog, the train ran on and on to where the railroad tracks run off into the blue sky. And then it ran on and on more and more.
Sometimes Gimme the Ax looked in his pocket, put his fingers in and took out the long 11 slick yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it. ”

“ Another whistle, another turn, and we grind into a small station, where we stop for a minute or two; then on and on we fly, faster for the short delay. The morning wears away, and we get out our luncheon. Broiled chicken and cold tongue! how they are associated with travelling! Their very odor is suggestive of the rattle of the train! We had scarce finished eating when the whistle sounded for Goldsboro’. We got off and found Aleck, one of the farm hands, waiting for us with the spring wagon, as Horace, he said, had not yet got up with the carriage. ”

“ Should a train for any cause be required to gradually reduce its speed between stations or at unusual points the engineman will sound one long and three short blasts of the whistle, as notice to the conductor to drop off a flagman with the proper signals to protect rear of train. ”

“ TRAVEL The railroad track is miles away, And the day is loud with voices speaking, Yet there isn't a train goes by all day But I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn't a train goes by, Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming But I see its cinders red on the sky, And hear its engine steaming. My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going. ”

“ These traps are used to stop the train when there is danger ahead, the patrol opens the switch, which automatically sets a signal, so that the engineer knows what is coming, and the train loses its force up the steep switch instead of plunging into the abyss below. As you lie in your berth at night and watch the great shining spot of the searchlight on the front of the engine as it lights up mountain, crag, and deep defile 1,000 yards ahead, the clear whistle rings out in the night ”

“ This bell signal during recent years has given way to an improved form of locomotive signal, sounded by means of compressed air in tubes throughout the train, and operated in connection with the air-brake equipment.
The air-whistle, or bell cord-code of signals, is standard upon all American railroads, and is as follows:
When the train is standing:
When the train is in motion:
There also arises a necessity for communication between men who stand outside the train and who seek to guide the movement of the locomotive. ”

“ Ordinarily, there is no danger to be apprehended from in front, because the dispatcher will permit no train coming toward them to pass the next station until the train which is in trouble arrives there.
As soon as the heated journal has been cooled sufficiently to allow the train to proceed, the engineer blows four blasts on the whistle to recall the brakeman. But, obviously, during the time that he is walking back to the train and the train itself is « 63 » getting under way, another train may come along at full speed and run into it. ”

“ Then the train whistles—louder and louder—and we move off—faster and faster and faster and faster, until no one can make any more noise, and the dust of our stamping has risen like incense to the roof, in a grand finale of freedom. ”

“ They have lengthened out the train by this time with a string of flat cars and freight cars between where we are sitting and the engine. But at every crossway we can hear the long muffled roar of the whistle, dying to a melancholy wail that echoes into the woods; the woods, I say, for the farms are thinning out and the track plunges here and there into great stretches of bush,--tall tamerack and red scrub willow and with a tangled undergrowth of bush that has defied for two generations all attempts to clear it into the form of fields. ”

“ The harsh barking of a dog rouses one from slumber; it is plainly in most cases an annoyance which has no just reason for existence—the neighborhood were better off without it.
The railroad whistles, scarcely farther removed and far more plainly heard, are not annoying. At once they are accepted by the mind as possessing a reason. For behind the whistle are the vast driving-wheels, the passengers, the mails, and the merchandise. When I hear the locomotive’s whistle I feel the locomotive’s power, and the significance of its strength. It is the voice of might and speed ”

“ It waits there on the mountain grades, in an ambush really deadly for an unwary train, until the sun, which is particularly lazy in the fall, peeping over into the cuts, smiles, at length, on the bearded steel as if it were too funny, and the whiskers vanish into thin air.
A smooth-faced rail presents no especial dangers; and if trainmen in the Hills had their way, they would never turn a wheel until the sun had done barbering. But despatchers not having to do with them take no account of whiskers. They make only the schedules, and the whiskers make the trouble. ”

“ There are few sights finer; few better calculated to quicken the pulse. It is most striking at night. The glare of the head-light, the rush and throb of the locomotive,—the connecting rod and driving-wheels of which seem instinct with nervous life,—the flashing lamps in the cars, and the final whirl of dust in which the red tail-lights vanish almost as soon as they are seen,—all this is well calculated to excite our admiration; but the special and unending cause for wonder is how, in case of accident, anything whatever is left of the train. ”

“ As it comes puffing and steaming up, the interest rises into excitement, and then, as the engine plunges under the bridge, boils over in enthusiasm. How are they to express this emotion in the few seconds at their disposal? They must be very quick, for the carriages are slipping rapidly past one after the other. It is of no use shouting, for the train makes more noise than they, and they, unfortunately, have no handkerchiefs to wave. ”

“ Where then were the iron roads over which the locomotive goes thundering on its mission of civilization? where the telegraph, that mocks at time and annihilates space? Hark! there is a new sound breaking the stillness of midnight, and startling the mountain echoes from their sleep of ages! It is the scream of the steam-whistle, the snort of the iron horse, the thunder of his hoofs of steel, rushing forward with the speed of the wind, shaking the ground like an earthquake as he moves. A new motor has been harnessed into the service of man, and made to fly with his messages swifter than sound? ”

“ Is any spectacle really more interesting than a railway train in motion? Why, even the stolidest laborer in the field, or the most blasé switchman off duty, takes a moment off to stare at it. By night, with its dazzling headlight, its engine eating fire and breathing steam and smoke, its flashes of red light upon the trees as its furnace doors are opened and closed, its long line of gleaming windows, the roar and clang of its progress—not in the world is anything more fascinating, more artistic nor, but for its familiarity, more picturesque. ”

“ In the country be sure to sound the whistle; not once, but four times as required by Rule 2, and see that the bell is kept ringing until the crossing is passed, at dangerous and obscure crossings where you can neither see the travelers approaching nor they you; if you are running at a high rate of speed, sound the whistle before you get to the post, as well as at it. The law requiring the giving of this warning eighty rods from the highway was enacted when few trains exceeded twenty-five miles an hour. ”

“ We could easily distinguish between the sound of the whistle of an American locomotive and that of a French engine, the American whistle being deep and the French shrill. It may seem strange to think that I comment upon such a small matter as a locomotive whistle, but when one is in a foreign land, amid foreign scenes and sounds, a familiar sound is good to hear, even though it is as unmusical as a deep blast of an American-made locomotive. ”

“ When you hear whistles in the night, sit up smartly in your bunk and count them. Should they reach five, draw on your trousers over your pyjamas and leave the train instantly. As a further precaution against accident, sleep with the feet towards the engine if you prefer to have the feet crushed, or with the head towards the engine, if you think it best to have the head crushed. ”