Uniqueness

I was laying awake last night listening to a train go through town. Valley Center is on a major rail line of the BNSF Railroad. It’s not the busiest line, but there are 25 to 30 trains a day that go through, they tell me. We are about a mile from the tracks. It’s usually easy to hear the horns as they blow for the main crossings in town. They start out a higher pitch and gradually go down in pitch as they travel through (the physics of sound…look it up).
Some years ago, locomotives had an automatic horn that, when triggered, would blow two longs, a short, and a long. The automatic horns really detracted, I thought, from the uniqueness and the “experience” of a passing train. I’ve not heard that monotonous sound for a long time (automatic horns were easy to spot), and am thankful for that. Why?
Each engineer has his or her own method of sounding the horn, it seems. No two are exactly alike. Some stick pretty close to the two longs, a short, and a long. Some just blow long blasts. A few will hold the horn on continuously all the way through the intersections. Others will blow several shorter blasts. Some at night will blow the horn seemingly in order to not wake anyone, but remain legal. Some don’t care and will blast everyone awake. Some will turn on the bell (Most locomotives have a bell that when turned on will clang regularly. Look for it when observing a passing loco under the cab hanging below the main carriage over and just to the back of the front wheel trucks.). Others won’t.
When we lived by the tracks some years ago, I could tell that the same engineer was coming through on a train as before by the way he or she blew the horn. I never knew for sure as I couldn’t see in the cab, but I’d bet the farm it was the same one.
We’ve not lived here long enough for me to pick out certain engineers yet. I don’t know if we will be here that long or not, but I certainly enjoy listening as the trains go by. I only wish we lived a little closer….