We’ve lived here in the suburbs nearly fifty years. Hearing train whistles in the distance is just part of the local ambiance. I’d never wondered what a signal meant until recently, probably because I’m just out of deep sleep about the time the 3 a.m. train comes through, with its mournful long-long-short-long song.
I learned that it’s the most common whistle signal which is sounded every time a train approaches a grade crossing. That long-long-short-long signal is specified in railroad manuals.
But the early history of the signal is more fascinating. Long-long-short-long is Morse Code for the letter Q. In England, any ship carrying the Queen would announce her presence by sounding long-long-short-long on the horn to warn other ships in the harbor out of the way. When she began to travel by rail, the same signal followed. When approaching the station, the train whistle wailed the familiar sequence.
The tradition from England came to the US with our railroad system and became the standard signal. It still is today, more than 200 years later.
National Train Day
National Train Day was created by Amtrack in 2008 to commemorate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the US at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869.