Hear that Lonesome Whistle.....or not?

Hiya cinder, I haven't seen you around here. I thought I was the lone albertan/western canuck at a2k, good to know I'm not alone.

As I said earlier, I live by the tracks a loading yard (I think that's what it's called). Anyway...
I have to really concentrate to hear the locomotion commotion. When the trains are stopping the wheels squeal and I love that sound, kind of a banshee opera. But when the trains stop or have other sections added, it sound like thunder. I can't tell you how many times friends/family have been visiting and have jumped out of there skin when the Trains go Boom. I don't hear it and I have to laugh and then explain.

Ceili, i think theres a couple of us around, iam not much for posting but still check in quite a bit. My love of Fred Eaglesmith has come from our great alberta radio station ckua. Trains send out so many wonderful sounds(to some). I really love that metallic skreach of a train stopping, from a distance mind you. and the chug of an ideling deisel can be quite a esoteric symphony if you listen close enough.

I need to take a good long train ride at some point in my life. i have ridden in a small steam engine. Ceili might know, would that be Fort Edmonton or Heritage park in Calgary?

My favoriet experience with a train happened a few years back. I was out in the middle of a Very large train tressle taking pictures of a Ravens nest with some baby ravens (what would a baby raven be called anyway?). One side of the tressle has a very narrow track with safety outcroppings for people to stand if a train comes. so after getting some really great shots of the baby ravens i heard the trains wistle, i sat down on one of these little "safe" areas. I figured i would be able to get a couple really great shots as the train passed. The train flew past me, the engineer blasting his horn at me the whole time. I got one picture but the tressle started shaking violently, the wind from the passing cars started blowing me around and the noise was deafening. I suddenly found myself clinging as tightly as i could to the nearest railing, not that i really wanted to it just happened. so there i was sitting on a little ledge about 200feet in the air with a long prairie train flying past me 3 feet away. It was one of those moments that seem to last forever, lots of time to think, just the perfect amount of adrenalin to get that "everything is in perfect balance" feeling. I just love that feeling. The powerful unstoppable motion of the train mixed with an understanding of just how small and insignificant a creature iam and feeling at total peace with that fact. a really great analogy to life. so to end..... I LOVE TRAINS!!!

I love this thread.

Cinder, this is weird but I'm in the midst of writing a thread about CKUA. Bill Coull's retirement is on my mind.
If you love Fred you must love Corb Lund. I'm listening to Baba's show right now and it's groovin'.
I've never been to heritage but the fort has a working steam engine and the track circles the whole park.

I have sadly never take a long distance train trip either. I rode a lot of them in England and I visited a great train museum. National Railway Museum

My favorite train memory happened in Golden BC. Golden is set in mythical surroundings deep in the rockies. The aptly named kicking horse river cuts a steep valley on one end and levels out onto an ancient mountain flood plain.
Trains follow the river and the narrow valley on a sharp decline with brakes screaming as they enter town.
I was standing at the rivers edge, next to the rock cliff embankment and across from the incoming west bound train. When all the cars finally stopped, as each car crashed to a halt, a tremendous ricochet effect rumbled past me, bounced off the sheer granite walls and crecendoed through me and I swore, I could not only feel the sound but see the waves it produced. It was powerful.

Ceili, what you are referring to above is known as a siding. The little town i lived in with my grandparents had no particular significance for anyone other than the farmers, for whom it was a place to transact business, with the exception of its siding. It had a 180-car siding, which meant that it had a particular significance for the railroad, which could make up an entire train through the shunting of cars into the siding, which could later be picked up to form a train. It didn't have a passenger terminal, although passengers could travel there, if they were able to book a berth on a train with passenger service which would ordinarily stop there (about twice a week). We all had railroad passes (because my grandfather was station master and telegrapher), which meant we could board any train stopping there, and ride to a station which was a passenger terminal. In theory, that would be either of the twice-weekly trains; in practice, my grandfather's popularity with all the train crews meant that he simply announced that we would be going here or there, and the next train of any description which stopped would put us in the caboose, and we'd ride to a station where we could board a passenger train.

No one here has mentioned the hoboes--perhaps not many here are old enough. They were still common enough when i was a child in the 1950's. When his twin daughters were still small, my grandfather had constructed a playhouse for them, with sash-windows and a door about 3 1/2 feet high. I would sometimes see chalked symbols on the little play house, and when i once asked my grandmother about it, she got angry, and went to the playhouse to wash it off. Despite her pique, i later learned that they were marking the playhouse to indicate that if one waited respectfully out of sight, a meal might be had. That would entail my angry granmother making up a packet of sandwiches, muttering under her breath, and then handing them to a small child with a mason jar full of coffee. Shel would thrust them at the small child, saying: "Here, give this to that man out there, and make sure i get my mason jar back!"

Here's a link to some of those hobo signs:HOBOSIGNS

Remember hoboes? I are one. After I'd determined that hitch hiking was becoming too dangerous, I began riding the rails. I could still lead you to that church at the California/Arizona border, the one that would thrust a bean sandwich at us before slamming the door. I froze my feet coming through the mountains one night. I probably minimized the effect of it by walking about twenty miles the next day. But, a day or two later I could not walk, which lasted for about a week.

ahhhh. What delightful memories, Noddy. Of course, I always think of the beautiful lyrics of Hank Williams.



I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry Lyrics






Hear that lonesome whippoorwill,
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry.

Did you ever see a robin weep,
When leaves began to die?
That means he's lost the will to live,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The line "...the midnight train is whinning low..." gets me every time.

The Wreck of the old 97 is a great one, too.

Hank Snow - Miscellaneous

The Wreck Of The Old '97


They give him his orders at Monroe, Virginia
Sayin', "Steve you're way behind time
This is not Thirty-Eight, but it's old Ninety-Seven
You must put her in Spencer on time"

Then he looked 'round and said to his black greasy fireman
"Just shovel in a little more coal
And when we cross that white oak mountain
You can watch old Ninety-Seven roll"

It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville
In a line on a three mile grade
It was on that grade where he lost his airbrakes
So you see what a jump he made

He was goin' down grade makin' ninety miles an hour
And his whistle broke into a scream
He was found in the wreck, with his hand on the throttle
And scalded to death by the steam

Now, ladies, you must all take warning
From this time on and learn
Never speak harsh words to your true lovin' husband
He may leave you and never return

Thanks Set, as usual you come through with the most interesting commentary.
I had no idea Hobo's had their own written lingo, facinating.
Oooh, Edgar - I feel your pain. I had frostbite too many times to count. Ouch.

My grandparents house had been "built up" over what was originally a four-room "bungalo." My grandfather had added an upstairs portion, with two bedrooms. Once, he moved all of the furniture out of the bedrooms, one room at a time, so that he could strip and refinish the hardwood floors. When the room i slept in with my brothers had been finished and reoccupied, i recall arising in the night, and crossing the landing to the other room, in which the light had been left burning. It was late at night, and a slow freight was passing the crossing about four miles west of town. The "lonesome" whistle blew as that train was "winding low"--the echo in the room of plaster walls and wooden floor, with no furnishings to deaden the sound will always remain my strongest memory of a train's whistle in the long, loney watches of the night.

Oh! Those moments in time that last forever -- they're very special. Thanks for sharing, Setanta.

Hear that lonesome whistle
Less romantic but totally memorable:

I had occasion some years ago to travel from Denver to New York - with the usual change in Chicago - but along with all my luggage, I had a carrier with a small (2-months old) kitten. If you have never shared a Pullman roomette with a small and very active animal, you can picture how things went. If not, well, let me advise you not to try it. I was terrified that Tigger would escape, or, alternatively, sit and cry whenever I left the roomette for the diner, to the point of someone coming in to investigate and, of course, letting him out.

Roomettes are not meant to be shared.

Wow; it's amazing how one sound can produce so many memories. It is a graceful, haunting sound, that of the whistle.

Around here, we neither have hobos nor that whistle, but both commit themselves to memory without any experience of them. Are there many people who ride freight trains nowadays? What's 'Beat the Train?'

I think very few people "ride the rails" these days, the "yard cops" have cracked down a lot in the last 30 years, largely in response to the increased cost of liability suits. "Beat the train" is an idiot sport, usually practiced by idiot teenagers, who attempt to drive around the gates of a railroad crossing and get over the crossing before an oncoming train reaches that point. Quite a few fatalities have been associated with over the years. An engineer with two puller diesels and two pusher diesels on a 150-car train doing 60 miles an hour cannot possibly stop in the distance at which he would first see the car on the crossing. I believe i once read that such a freight train needs about 2 and one half miles to go from 60 to 0.

Shave and a haircut- two bits!

I like that.

Brits say "How's your father? All right!"

I shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die....

That's a shame; with hitchhikers not being picked up, and the police (logically) cracking down on freighters, you just have to get a car. Or take the bus... yikes.

One possibility that is still possible over here is this: say that you want to go to Liverpool from London, people will buy a ticket to Birmingham (in the middle of the two) or Milton Keynes, and then about ten minutes before their 'stop' on the ticket, they go into the toilet, pretend to have Diarrhoea, and stay in the toilet until the main city /before/ the end of the line, as everyone gets busted at the end of the line. If they go South, they get off at the first stop before the electronic barriers come in. It's amazing how many people do it. The other alternative is to 'fall asleep.'

Hear
"Wabash Cannonball"

"All the way from Philadelphi-ay
On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe"

BTW - Piffka wins the prize; it is "Track 29". And the next line is "Boy, you can give me a shine" (but that's politically incorrect now, so maybe the words have changed a little bit).

Truly a great thread here. Some random thoughts:

I grew up hearing the LIRR whistles at night. Not the most romantic of runs, but it didn't matter to me. It made me want to get out of LI and go somewhere else, which I eventually did. Lived in Eugene for a while not far from a switching yard. The first night I almost leapt out of my bed when I heard the sound of metal on metal--it was that harsh and loud. Got used to it, though. Now I can hear the whistles even though I'm not at all close to the rails. Connects me back to all that, and it's wonderful.

Re the run along Commencement Bay (south of Tacoma): I ride it all the time via Amtrak, and it's glorious.

In 1977 I went across America on the bus, from New York to LA and San Francisco. That was a trip to remember.
Somewhere around the middle on the way back (I'll have to look up my journal to identify the place) on one of our stops there was a railroad off to one side of the road, and there was freight train stopped there.
I took a few pictures, because the train went right out of sight, so it seemed, in both directions. Standing near the rairoad cars, it was not possible to see the whole length of the train.
All the scene needed was a Ry Cooder soundtrack.
It seemed such a typically "Western" scene to me.

I took my last ride in the late 60s. It was no longer fun and in fact extremely dangerous. Plus, one got off thoroughly covered with railroad "grease." I love my experiences, but would prefer to not have lived them, looking back.

I had friends who did it in the mid-70s. I thought it was insanely dangerous--and I used to do a fair amount of hitchhiking...