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New rules mean that the lonesome lowing of the train whistle will sound a little quieter.

December 18, 2003

Under Rules, Train Whistles Will Lose Some of Their Blare
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — The distant whistle of a passing train is about to get a little more distant.
The Federal Railroad Administration on Wednesday announced the first limit on how loud a whistle can be and set a procedure for towns to set up "quiet zones."
Allan Rutter, administrator of the agency, said the proposed rule resulted from a collision of suburban growth and a rise in rail traffic.
"People find themselves adjacent to busier railroads, that's where the conflict comes," Mr. Rutter said. He said his grandmother in the Texas Panhandle lives within earshot of a line that carries 80 trains a day.
Bill Withuhn, the curator of transportation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, said, "The lonesome train whistle is not so lonesome anymore."
The museum has just opened a new exhibit on transportation, which includes a celebration of train whistles. But Mr. Withuhn agreed that the whistle could go from romantic to annoying. "Airplanes are romantic, too, but in small doses," he said.
Mr. Rutter said that 9.3 million people were "affected in some way by train horn noise" and that the rule would cut the number by 3.4 million.
Train engineers sound their whistles mostly when they approach roads at grade-level crossings, of which the United States has more than 150,000. Towns and cities have banned whistles at about 2,000 crossings, and in 1996, Congress called for uniform standards for such bans. Mr. Rutter said it took years to come up with them because there had to be a way to balance peace and quiet against the death toll at grade crossings, which last year was nearly 400.
The 500-page "interim final rule" is still subject to a 60-day public comment period and would come into force a year from now.
One provision will limit volume to 110 decibels, compared with the 120 decibels of some whistles now in service. The minimum since 1980 has been 96 decibels, and whistles must still be loud enough to be heard in a car with the windows rolled up and the air conditioner running.
Also, engineers will blow their horns 15 to 20 seconds before reaching a crossing. They now must sound the horn a quarter-mile from a crossing, which for a slow-moving train can be much longer than 20 seconds.
For those living near the tracks, that is probably still long enough to "hear the whistle blowing, rise up so early in the morn."

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