Post by bennyp81 on Jun 15, 2005 12:03:46 GMT -8
Bart Reed
User ID: 1905964 Mar 24th 5:43 PM
San Jose Mercury News: Sun, Mar. 24, 2002
Critics seek "melodious' Caltrain horns
RESIDENTS NEAR TRACKS LOOK FOR RELIEF FROM LOUD BLASTS
By Shawn Neidorf
Staff Writer
Bob Castiglione is a veteran Caltrain engineer as well as an opera enthusiast -- and drawing on his interest in those divergent disciplines, he has added a new angle to the debate over the noise generated by Caltrain horns.
When the city of Menlo Park recently grappled with the noisy-horns issue, Castiglione wrote to the city council, admitting that the Caltrain horns sound lousy. He likened some of them to "elephants with a severe nasal problem.''
Nevertheless, the horn is Castiglione's only way to warn a pedestrian, animal or driver to stay off the tracks, and he isn't eager to give it up as long as he has to cross city streets with a train that weighs 375 tons.
"As an opera buff, I can tell when the singer is right on and when he or she hits a clinker,'' Castiglione wrote to the Menlo Park City Council. "Unfortunately, most of our horns sound like clinkers.''
But what if they didn't?
Rules govern how loud a train's horn must be and when it must be activated -- generally, a quarter-mile before a crossing -- but regulators haven't taken on what the horns should sound like.
Would a more pleasing horn reduce neighbors' irritation with the blasts that accompany the 80 commuter trains that thunder past their homes each weekday?
Maybe.
"If it were some melodious sound, I suppose, and if they didn't lean on the horn so much as they do,'' said Margaret Petitjean, who has lived near the tracks in Menlo Park for 40 years and despises the frequent blasts.
Horns intended to alert drivers in well-insulated cars are blasting unshielded pedestrians and neighbors, she said. Petitjean finds it so disturbing that she won't garden or sweep outside her home without ear muffs or plugs.
She would prefer no horn blasting at crossings: She doesn't think the noise would keep drivers intent on ignoring warning gates and lights from trying to bypass them.
Richard Steinberger lives about three blocks from the tracks in Palo Alto and has taken note of Caltrain's efforts begun in 2000 to muffle horn noise.
"It used to be such that it would wake you from a sound sleep in the middle of the night . . . and be really painful if you were trying to cross the street at an intersection,'' he said.
To him, it makes no difference whether the sound is prettier. But Petitjean acknowledged that the whistles from steam trains "were pretty nice.''
That's what Bob Swanson thought, too.
Swanson was the chief railroad inspector for the province of British Columbia when diesel locomotives pushed out steam engines after World War II. The change silenced the steam whistle, the signature train sound for almost a century.
Five-tone air horn
Swanson deciphered the five frequencies, or notes, of the steam whistle and set out to transfer that chord to an air horn, said Bill Challenger, president of Airchime Manufacturing, a major air-horn maker in Langley, British Columbia, born of Swanson's efforts. He then created an air horn that would play those notes. Swanson patented his invention in the late 1940s.
Decades later, Deane Ellsworth would bring a modified version of Swanson's horn to the United States.
Ellsworth took charge of Amtrak's locomotive development in 1975 and found he needed a horn that would survive freezing winters without going mute. He turned to Swanson to develop an American version of his five-trumpet horn.
The Canadian horn wouldn't do: It was too big to clear U.S. train tunnels, Ellsworth said. And he wanted a different set of notes for American ears. The result was a harsher, but arguably more upbeat, sound than the plaintive wail of the Canadian horn. The American version, known as a K5LA, would become popular on passenger trains all over the country.
Caltrain used to use it, but the commuter rail now relies on new two-trumpet horns mounted on each end of its trains.
Unlike the K5LAs, which perch atop train roofs, the new horns are banished to the underside of cab cars and locomotives. And they're encased in boxes that are open only in front, so the sound is aimed forward to cut its intrusion into back yards and bedroom windows.
'More body to it'
Challenger would like all trains to use a five-trumpet horn -- preferably the original version, not the Americanized one -- instead of two- or three-trumpet varieties.
To put the difference in perspective, consider the sound of striking five keys on a piano instead of two. "It's got more body to it,'' Challenger said.
Altering the sound too much could be dangerous, though: Drivers need to know the horn signifies an approaching train, he said.
Caltrain agrees.
"We want to be good neighbors, but our first priority is always going to be both the safety of the pedestrians and vehicles crossing the tracks and the safety of the people on the train,'' said spokeswoman Jayme Maltbie.
In 2001, 14 people were killed by Caltrain; nine were suicides. Two people have been killed this year, and a boy playing "chicken'' with the train was hit but survived.
Still, train-horn buff Jim Evans hopes Caltrain does something to improve the horn's peal.
"They had a sound that was nice,'' he said. ``It was a little loud, and now they have a sound that is awful -- and it's still loud.''
But one person's Pavarotti is another's aural nightmare: A horn that Evans or Petitjean might like could sound terrible to someone else.
Caltrain's Maltbie knows it: "If we change the horns, we may irritate somebody else who isn't complaining.''
-----------------------------------------------
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED
To hear samples of train horns, visit the Mercury News online at Bayarea.com. For more information about train horns from the perspective of horn buffs, see:
atsf.railfan.net/airhorns/ or trainweb.com/mdamtrak199/horns.html
-------------------------------------------------
Contact Shawn Neidorf at sneidorf@sjmercury.com or (650) 688-7550.
Þ-®-®-®-Þ
Dan K.
User ID: 1348824 Apr 4th 3:15 PM
BART, thanks for setting this up for us. I will have BayRail's webmaster put a link to this site on our webpage. Is there a maximun number of topics that can be listed under the BayRail category? Anyway, it was great meeting you in Oakland at BATLUC's pow-wow.
Greg M.
User ID: 9544623 Apr 4th 3:45 PM
Interesting idea. If they make the trains sound too pleasant, you may get crowds gathering around the tracks to listen to them. And it will be a pretty short opera, once they get run over by the train.
Bart Reed
User ID: 7733333 Apr 4th 4:27 PM
Hi Dan:
You can have up to 100 threads for this heading.
Within each thread you can 100 posts.
We could put up topic threads such as:
A/C Transit
S.F. Muni / Rescue Muni
BART
Golden Gate Transit
Let me know what you want.
E-mail me at: transitcoalition@earthlink.net
[This post refers to the old transit board. --bennyp81]
Þ--Þ--Þ
User ID: 1905964 Mar 24th 5:43 PM
San Jose Mercury News: Sun, Mar. 24, 2002
Critics seek "melodious' Caltrain horns
RESIDENTS NEAR TRACKS LOOK FOR RELIEF FROM LOUD BLASTS
By Shawn Neidorf
Staff Writer
Bob Castiglione is a veteran Caltrain engineer as well as an opera enthusiast -- and drawing on his interest in those divergent disciplines, he has added a new angle to the debate over the noise generated by Caltrain horns.
When the city of Menlo Park recently grappled with the noisy-horns issue, Castiglione wrote to the city council, admitting that the Caltrain horns sound lousy. He likened some of them to "elephants with a severe nasal problem.''
Nevertheless, the horn is Castiglione's only way to warn a pedestrian, animal or driver to stay off the tracks, and he isn't eager to give it up as long as he has to cross city streets with a train that weighs 375 tons.
"As an opera buff, I can tell when the singer is right on and when he or she hits a clinker,'' Castiglione wrote to the Menlo Park City Council. "Unfortunately, most of our horns sound like clinkers.''
But what if they didn't?
Rules govern how loud a train's horn must be and when it must be activated -- generally, a quarter-mile before a crossing -- but regulators haven't taken on what the horns should sound like.
Would a more pleasing horn reduce neighbors' irritation with the blasts that accompany the 80 commuter trains that thunder past their homes each weekday?
Maybe.
"If it were some melodious sound, I suppose, and if they didn't lean on the horn so much as they do,'' said Margaret Petitjean, who has lived near the tracks in Menlo Park for 40 years and despises the frequent blasts.
Horns intended to alert drivers in well-insulated cars are blasting unshielded pedestrians and neighbors, she said. Petitjean finds it so disturbing that she won't garden or sweep outside her home without ear muffs or plugs.
She would prefer no horn blasting at crossings: She doesn't think the noise would keep drivers intent on ignoring warning gates and lights from trying to bypass them.
Richard Steinberger lives about three blocks from the tracks in Palo Alto and has taken note of Caltrain's efforts begun in 2000 to muffle horn noise.
"It used to be such that it would wake you from a sound sleep in the middle of the night . . . and be really painful if you were trying to cross the street at an intersection,'' he said.
To him, it makes no difference whether the sound is prettier. But Petitjean acknowledged that the whistles from steam trains "were pretty nice.''
That's what Bob Swanson thought, too.
Swanson was the chief railroad inspector for the province of British Columbia when diesel locomotives pushed out steam engines after World War II. The change silenced the steam whistle, the signature train sound for almost a century.
Five-tone air horn
Swanson deciphered the five frequencies, or notes, of the steam whistle and set out to transfer that chord to an air horn, said Bill Challenger, president of Airchime Manufacturing, a major air-horn maker in Langley, British Columbia, born of Swanson's efforts. He then created an air horn that would play those notes. Swanson patented his invention in the late 1940s.
Decades later, Deane Ellsworth would bring a modified version of Swanson's horn to the United States.
Ellsworth took charge of Amtrak's locomotive development in 1975 and found he needed a horn that would survive freezing winters without going mute. He turned to Swanson to develop an American version of his five-trumpet horn.
The Canadian horn wouldn't do: It was too big to clear U.S. train tunnels, Ellsworth said. And he wanted a different set of notes for American ears. The result was a harsher, but arguably more upbeat, sound than the plaintive wail of the Canadian horn. The American version, known as a K5LA, would become popular on passenger trains all over the country.
Caltrain used to use it, but the commuter rail now relies on new two-trumpet horns mounted on each end of its trains.
Unlike the K5LAs, which perch atop train roofs, the new horns are banished to the underside of cab cars and locomotives. And they're encased in boxes that are open only in front, so the sound is aimed forward to cut its intrusion into back yards and bedroom windows.
'More body to it'
Challenger would like all trains to use a five-trumpet horn -- preferably the original version, not the Americanized one -- instead of two- or three-trumpet varieties.
To put the difference in perspective, consider the sound of striking five keys on a piano instead of two. "It's got more body to it,'' Challenger said.
Altering the sound too much could be dangerous, though: Drivers need to know the horn signifies an approaching train, he said.
Caltrain agrees.
"We want to be good neighbors, but our first priority is always going to be both the safety of the pedestrians and vehicles crossing the tracks and the safety of the people on the train,'' said spokeswoman Jayme Maltbie.
In 2001, 14 people were killed by Caltrain; nine were suicides. Two people have been killed this year, and a boy playing "chicken'' with the train was hit but survived.
Still, train-horn buff Jim Evans hopes Caltrain does something to improve the horn's peal.
"They had a sound that was nice,'' he said. ``It was a little loud, and now they have a sound that is awful -- and it's still loud.''
But one person's Pavarotti is another's aural nightmare: A horn that Evans or Petitjean might like could sound terrible to someone else.
Caltrain's Maltbie knows it: "If we change the horns, we may irritate somebody else who isn't complaining.''
-----------------------------------------------
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED
To hear samples of train horns, visit the Mercury News online at Bayarea.com. For more information about train horns from the perspective of horn buffs, see:
atsf.railfan.net/airhorns/ or trainweb.com/mdamtrak199/horns.html
-------------------------------------------------
Contact Shawn Neidorf at sneidorf@sjmercury.com or (650) 688-7550.
Þ-®-®-®-Þ
Dan K.
User ID: 1348824 Apr 4th 3:15 PM
BART, thanks for setting this up for us. I will have BayRail's webmaster put a link to this site on our webpage. Is there a maximun number of topics that can be listed under the BayRail category? Anyway, it was great meeting you in Oakland at BATLUC's pow-wow.
Greg M.
User ID: 9544623 Apr 4th 3:45 PM
Interesting idea. If they make the trains sound too pleasant, you may get crowds gathering around the tracks to listen to them. And it will be a pretty short opera, once they get run over by the train.
Bart Reed
User ID: 7733333 Apr 4th 4:27 PM
Hi Dan:
You can have up to 100 threads for this heading.
Within each thread you can 100 posts.
We could put up topic threads such as:
A/C Transit
S.F. Muni / Rescue Muni
BART
Golden Gate Transit
Let me know what you want.
E-mail me at: transitcoalition@earthlink.net
[This post refers to the old transit board. --bennyp81]
Þ--Þ--Þ