Thread was getting too long so l wanted to say why European locomotives have these unimpressive sounding high pitch horns(even the low pitch one sounds like a bicycle imo). Of course this isn't about TSW only but also real life. And it's not just a size thing, even the Harlem Line subway train has that 1980s John Travolta movie horn which sounds exactly like a 90-car box train pulled and pushed by 8 AC4400CWs. Bells are also absent from European trains. Surely initially during the steam era, the whistles sounded similar on both sides of Atlantic(I'm not sure if Europeans have ever had bells though), so there must have been a trajectory of divergence to where it is now. Perhaps the higher number of level crossings and the relative ease of access to the tracks by unauthorized people(90% of track isn't fenced or walled off in the US unlike Europe) in the US necessitated horns and bells that are very audible and very distinctively recognizable as trains? Or was it an industrial design choice in Europe to make trains appear less intimidating and industrial, and more like everyday appliances?
I've done some internet research and your reason seems to be the main reason why. Railroad regulations and the need to warn people in advance, certain people in the US not being soo bright in terms of not crossing when there's a train coming. There's numerous incidents of truckers and cars getting stuck on railroad crossings when they could have just stopped. It gives people time to react way in advance due to how loud the horn is.
The pedant in me would like to point out that American trains have dramatic Hollywood-esque sounding horns because Hollywood movies use sound effects from American trains :P
1) because generally trains in Europe use their horns less, level crossings and the like are much safer. In the US horns and bells must be rung for at least 20 whole seconds on approach to LXs. 2) why not? It’s not a Hollywood horn, it’s just a horn with multiple chimes. 3) in the days of steam the US were already using multiple chimed steam whistles, much of Europe only single chime.
Getting your education exclusively from hollywood movies could be a little one-sided. I´d like to contribute to this thread with a collection of bollywoodesque sounds. And BTW: Why´s there no Doppler effect on TSW?
Also for wildlife, there are part of the rail network in Canada, that the train has to blow the horns to avoid having any wildlife on the tracks, like in the Rockies, the wildlife can not see the train coming as they might be on different side on a curve, with the horns, the wildlife has some chance of getting away
How about level crossings too since these US horns must be used 3-4 times on one? Also Express trains LIRR had them too pre third track project from Hicksville to Floral Park First is Hicksville to Ronkonkoma Gen Douglas McArthur Airport Railway station In-game routes Hicksville to Floral Park Level Crossings LIRR Harlem Line DTG should know that Express trains UK terminology fast trains in the US must use horns when not stopping since it's a Federal Railroad Administration rule
Not sure how it is in the rest of Europe, but things accross Europe are pretty standardized, in my country, trains are the only vehicles with two-tone horns. Bells are used by trams. This basically means that when you hear a horn/bell, you know whether you're dealing with a regular car, a tram, or a train, without the need to look. (Which also helps you to look at the right place and respond more quickly to a potential danger). Most railroad crossings are protected by visual and audio warnings, as well as barriers, with the exception of more rural areas and railroads that see low traffic. Noise-pollution is a thing in modern Europe so I don't think many of us would be happy with loud train horns (or train horns in general). Plus, most of us know to pay attention when crossing a railroad, and not blocking a railroad crossing with your car (in case of a traffic jam) is something everybody should learn during the process of earning your drivers license. Searching YouTube for train crashes gives me a load of videos from the US. Not sure that means that car-train collisions (and mostly truck-train collisions) are also more common in the US than in Europe, though. And you could argue that loud horns would keep their intimidating effect once people pretty much got used to it. Perhaps a tram bell is just as intimidating for the average European than a loud train horn is for the average American.
I'm not sure if Strassebahn has bells, I don't think I've heard bells when I lived in Frankfurt. But Amsterdam trams surely do, but unlike US train bells they sound them once or twice in place of a horn. But trams are more akin to road vehicles than trains in terms of how quickly they can stop and how slow they travel in the city. So hearing the horn of a 1.5 mile US freighter will still be more intimidating than a tram bell because you know it won't stop for you.
The same reason passing freight trains emit zero noise, apart from the engine sound, which you shouldn't be able to hear.
Where I live we have the classic two tones horn being present almost in every countries of Europe but also we do have e-bells and horn for trams and buses, e-bell is primarily used as it does less noise and it’s more convenient in densely populated areas but of course in case of emergency or if someone is stubborn/deaf the loud horn is used
Having lived in both North America and Western Europe (and visited the UK) I must say that while I agree that European/UK train horns can sound very pathetic (wheezy and “asthmatic”) I at the same time find the US/Canada practice of excessively blasting the horn and ringing the bell quite annoying. As for the horn sound itself, yes it is better than the barely audible wheezing tones so common in many areas of Europe but I personally don’t find the sound particularly pleasing to the ear and don’t share N. American rail fans’ horn obsession. Locomotive horns serve a utilitarian function and in North America with its wide open spaces, sparsely populated areas between cities and infrequent rail traffic (compared to Europe) a louder horn and more frequent blasting makes practical sense. But IMO the constant horn blowing and bell clanging is a bit over the top. (I saw in a documentary about American freight trains that US locos need bullet proof glass in part because of annoyed rural and small town residents taking potshots at them after being awoken up at night by freight trains blasting their horns ) As for Europe…not every horn sounds like a joke but many do and as a dedicated rail nerd I say it’s high time the relevant operators and regulators kitted locos out with louder, and more aesthetically pleasing, sounding horns.
Have you ever noticed the difference between US people and European people talking? The horns have to be louder to be heard over the sound of anyone ordering coffee.
That's it!! You hit the nail on the head, stujoy. Americans are such loudmouths that everything has to be at high volume.....train horns and bells, car horns, PA systems. And, then of course, we have to talk or shout even louder to make ourselves heard. It's a spiralling soundscape, ever louder. I mean, to order a sandwich or a cup of coffee in downtown Chicago or New York? Well!! You often see ordinary men and women walking around with a bullhorn round their necks. I myself have started to bark like a large dog to get my wife's attention, if there is a train passing nearby, as we live quite close to a grade crossing.
Not always true, Italians and Spanish can be pretty loud but their train horns aren't any more impressive than the Finns who say 8 words in a year.
I am sure there are a lot of tongues in cheek here, but nevertheless, let's dial down the nationalist insults As a European living for some years in the USA, let me add a comment or two. First, I find baffling the flimsy nature of many crossing barriers in the US - far too easy to drive around - I hear you - Darwin selection in action. Where I live we have almost weekly tragedies involving crossings, but usually with passenger trains - they move much faster and are much harder to hear (or feel) coming (not counting the horn). But then you have the geniuses in local communities that put noise pollution control ahead of safety and insist that trains do not sound horns in night hours, even though the nearby dwellings were built after the railroad - guess when most accidents happen? It should also be noted that almost half of fatalities are not at crossings, but due to the ease of access to rail lines, happen whilst pedestrians cross lines elsewhere. The other factor is the more or less universal use of air conditioning in vehicles. This alone is a good reason to have high decibel horns (notice also that the frequency range is lower than European horns) and I can attest from experience that often the first two or three horns in the standard sequence go unheard.
Perhaps we don't think that people need to be protected from themselves or their own stupidity. Almost every day, on my local news, there's a video of someone running a grade crossing in front of a train, mostly from the UK, strangely enough. ?? You'll have to explain the connection between a/c and danger to pedestrians or other drivers.
A/C would force you to keep your windows closed. Which, in today's modern cars, would isolate you thermally and accoustically. The driver loses touch with his surroundings. It sure is a safety aspect to consider.
Well, the fan in my car is fairly quiet, whether I have heating or cooling switched on. The windows are closed in either case. And as both are standard equipment and have been for many years, I've never heard of them being mentioned as a factor in road accidents. Rather a silly notion, I think.
Maybe silly, yes. But that wouldn´t explain why car makers, my former employer amongst them, dedicate a good amount of R&D money to research exactly that. HVAC being one of several aspects to consider. https://www.researchgate.net/public...ng_safety_Effects_of_car_body_sound_isolation
In my country, barriers usually only go halfway the road, to block the right side of the road, not the left. This allows people to safely leave the railroad crossing, and eliminates the chance people get stuck on the crossing, blocked between barriers. If people drive around barriers, they know they're doing something they aren't supposed to do. Question is then; why do they do it? In my country barriers close only a limited number of seconds before the train comes (I believe I've heard it's 15 seconds, but not sure), and they open right after the train has left the crossing (unless another train is approaching). Anyways, it's never a long wait, and you'd be a fool to bypass a barrier. And yes, there's fools here too, but I think it's far less common (partly because in the recent years, governments start to invest in building tunnels/bridges rather than level crossings, in part because they're safer, and in part because a large railroad can split towns in half (urban development). So, there's a railroad crossing, with a barrier. I assume flashing red lights and a bell are also present? I don't think a train horn is gonna solve your problem, because people already know a train is approaching. Railroads in my country are usually fenced off, but places to safely cross them (either tunnels, bridges or protected railroad crossings) are pretty frequent. But pedestrian safety is a priority here in my country, not just pedestrial vs train, but most importantly, pedestrian vs car. Then a better solution would be to regulate the sound of air conditioning in road vehicles, as being able to hear your surroundings is important for traffic safety in general. Plus, again, barriers (plus presumably lights) at the railroad crossing means there's also visual indications a train is approaching.
The issue there is not the noise of air conditioning - which is pretty minimal, usually nonexistent, except when you first get in the car on a very hot day and the fans run at maximum for a short while until it cools down. The problem, rather, is that carmakers for years have been getting better and better at soundproofing and interior noise amelioration, so that driving a modern car is less like driving a Model T. This on the whole is considered to be a good thing. The only place a/c factors in is that it implies having all the windows closed, and the car thus acoustically sealed.
Why worry about the sound proofing when many drive with the radio blasting so … Main reason for loud horns in the US is most railways are unfenced, many crossing in the country are not protected and safety barriers may fail. As others have noted, no need to bring in National slurs over such nits as the loudness of a horn.
A lot of people already have given good answers but yeah the technical answer is FRA regulations in the US require horns to be audible at a certain decibel level at a certain distance. I'm not sure if multi-tone horns are required or just tradition, but multiple tones at different pitches does help cut through ambient noise in case one of the ambient sounds is at the same pitch or an octave different from one of the horn tones--it's the same reason pealess referee whistles nearly all modern sports officials use have two to three chambers at different pitches. As for why the regulations are as such, I have a few hypotheses. First, our grade crossing infrastructure isn't as good. Unlike in Europe where grade separation is far more common and tracks often go over or under roads rather than across them--especially on high-speed lines--and when there are crossings, they often are completely closed when a train is passing, there are a decent number of crossings without gates here and occasionally fail due to crumbling infrastructure. Second, our drivers are just dumber. Even when they see the gates, many still think the train is farther and slower than it really is. On a related note, our trains are often heavier thus having a much greater stopping distance even at low speeds. Europe generally has lighter trains and makes significant use of electric trains with more responsive electric braking and multiple units where every carriage can use it's own engine or electric brakes. Thus US train horns need to be able to carry further. 4th reason IMO is that our trains generally travel through less dense areas so noise pollution isn't as much as a concern. Finally--and this also goes for the bells--the US is much more litigation-happy. If a person standing too close to the tracks or platform edge is engrossed in their phone and gets bodied by a passing train (unlike Europe, in the US, especially outside the NEC, there often are not passing tracks at stations for express or limited stop trains meaning non-stop trains can blast through occupied platforms) they or their survivors are very likely to sue the railroad for not adequately warning them and a jury that's been conditioned to not like trains and big companies may very well award them some damages. Edit: Also I hate to be pedantic, but the Harlem line train isn't a subway. It's still a suburban commuter train. The US just tends to have only two design philosophies for EMUs: Either they look like subway trains (pretty much all LIRR and Metro-North as well as SEPTA) since subway trains are already the most common EMUs and if the design ain't broke, don't fix it--or they look like the unpowered passenger stock that would normally be used by that railroad (e.g. Metra Electric Line Highliner II's) because it's as easy as slapping traction and pantos onto a cab car and calling it a day. The US has generally not heard of streamlined or aerodynamic EMUs.
'The US has generally not heard of streamlined or aerodynamic EMUs.' Generally correct I suppose - but South Florida is in the middle of introduction of the Brightline trains, using Siemens Charger sets (not EMUs of course, being variations of the Eurosprinter designs made in California) - very much streamlined and eventually running at 125mph. Unfortunately, they have been involved in an elevated number of crashes - the aforementioned Darwin effect. These trains are running in an urban environment and so there are usually no sight-lines for advance visual warning (other than the bells and lights of course!). At 75mph the train will cover 550 yards after starting the regulation horn pattern (15 seconds before the crossing) - not much time to change your mind if you do something stupid.
Probably because we only ever use EMUs as commuter trains,* where they don't run at high speeds or if they do not for any distance. We have no equivalent of the BR442. Streamlining would have little if any effect on the operational costs of the MTA, but it would cost them a few paying passenger seats. For that matter, most German S-Bahn EMUs aren't streamlined, and virtually no British ones are. *Technically the Acela isn't an EMU, it's a sandwich consist like the HST or ICE 1.
15 seconds should be plenty of time. If you can't clear a railroad crossing within 15 seconds, you shouldn't even start crossing it. I've been looking up some videos on typical railroad crossing in my country, and the time between the first lights&bells and the train crossing is only a bit longer than 15 seconds. And we don't need train horns to indicate a train is approaching. Though admittedly, our level crossings are hard to miss.
I have no idea why the US is getting so much grief about railroad crossings: this is a typical one: If some moron wants to cross anyway he would have to move over to the other lane, drive wrong-way, and then change lanes again to get around the gate on the far side. Frankly, I'm all in favor of deleting someone that stupid from the gene pool.
I was railfanning one night at Santa Fe junction in Kansas City. Now trains moving through there are going 15mph ish. The trains blow more than the required long long short long because the crossing crosses 5 or 6 tracks and there is no signal. A train is coming blowing like crazy. Truck comes screaming down the road. If he stops he’s waiting 10 mins minimum so he tries to run the crossing. Train is blowing constantly now truck is crossing three tracks realizes he can make it and locks up his breaks and stops just short. that’s why.
I don't think I've ever heard multi-tone here in the U.S. That's an interesting point about a range of sounds penetrating ambient noise. But so does MORE DECIBELS! Really, seeing one of our giant locos approaching and then giving off a little European two-tone toot would be such a surreal mismatch, like the first time I saw Mike Tyson on tv and then heard him speak. That's exactly what they do; I've watched it. I'm normally all in favor of Darwin winning, but in this case drivers also often have passengers who have no choice, plus there's train personnel and passengers who can also be traumatized and injured, or worse.
America = bigger, louder, better. I see a f7 in a London museum some time ago. Made British locomotives look like micro machines.
Same with the German locos. I´ve always wondered how they put these loco monsters on top of the same track gauge. 1435mm, wasn´t it?
The F7 isn’t considered to be a large locomotive on this side of the pond, I just returned from spending two weeks in Stuttgart DE on a consulting gig. My hotel was near the Stuttgart Train station… spent an evening rail fanning and had a great time. Did notice the EMUs and locomotives were smaller than I imagined. But was nice to view them in person.
I'm still in old money 4 feet 8 1/2 inches or 56.5 inches. Then I've seen locos just as big as the European ones running on narrow gauge I'm sure some countries use the US size locos on narrow gauge also. I guess as long as the balance is right it should stay on the rails.
I never thought the f7s were so big until I stood next to one. Then it's the same with European shunters/switchers compared to the size of what is used in the US. I once owned a old Buick. It was as wide as a truck and made European cars look tiny.
I know my pickup would never make it down the spiral ramps to park in the hotel in Stuttgart. But then again, in the US we have so much space… it takes two days to drive across Texas alone… and then to see the massive openness of Wyoming and Sherman Hill and the ruggedness of the Rockies then you understand why US locos are the size they are. The variety of locos, EMUs, and DMUs of the various countries is one reason I enjoy this hobby so much.
Funny story: My grandmother's family emigrated to the U.S. from Germany when she was a child. Later, after being successful here, they returned to their village for a visit with family and friends and brought some things along to show off their success, including a big American car. But the car ended up having to stay on the ferry, because it was wider than the village streets.
When I would drive in England it wasn’t driving on the other side of the road or sitting in the other side of the car or the roundabouts that got to me. It was the wee little bitty roads. Then I went down to Cornwall and drove around there. Those damned roads were even smaller. After that the roads in surrey and north were much much wider. you wanna see some teeny roads go to places like mousehole or others around penzance area.
Thats the most american thing ive read in a while . But considering the fuss they make about something like brightline having accidents with people who dont know what a level crossing means or even is, their Horn practice becomes clear. I enjoy leaning about different operating rules in each country and would wish TSW took them into accountance like in tutorials or manuals (if there were any.....)
Fun fact; in American Truck Simulator, AI trains use the proper horn sequence when approaching a level crossing, and that game isn't even about trains...
Don't believe everything you see on TV. US locomotives have normal automotive safety glass. _______________________________________________ A big reason for all the horn-blowing is inertia- partly bureaucratic (steam-era regulations which have never been repealed, because regulations have eternal life), and partly cultural; the sound of a freight train whistle in the distance is part of the American traditional auditory landscape.
They are not always high pitched, there are plenty of older English-Electric locomotives that have a more mid range tone to them (like on a class 50) as well as first gen DMUs (not like the one that provided the horn for the 101 in TSC). Also not forgetting the angled compact horns fitted to class 56, 58, 59, and 66.
