In the Christian Book of Revelation we read that angels will sound seven trumpets to signal the apocalyptic events that will lead to a new kingdom of Heaven. I heard such a trumpet on my first night in my new apartment and it wasn’t announcing hail or blood or a mountain thrown into the sea. It was just the Union Pacific freight hauling 128 hoppers of soybeans south where those beans would meet their doom. I live within earshot of UP’s Third Street tracks, you see, and in that part of town the horn blasts sound apocalypse more than a dozen times a day.
Anyone who lives in cities, as I have for much of my life, is serenaded each night but not by crickets. In my case it’s been el trains, truck air brakes on the tollway, sirens, news helicopters, back-up beeps from the trash trucks and, here in my new place, drag-racers on Fifth Street and bells from the cathedral. Intercity freight locomotives add their own unique notes to this symphony of memory. Each train horn sounds a fixed note, and a loco can be equipped with as many as five different horns. Sounded together they play chords, although this is musical only metaphorically, being the sort of noise that made symphony fans stop going to contemporary music concerts. Theoretically, train horns could be made to play tunes; I look forward to the day when a grateful UP teaches its engine drivers how to play Brahms’s lullaby when they rumble through the city in the middle of the night.
To those who go to sleep listening to the grass grow, the perennial complaints about train horns must seem a lot of noise about very little. The number of people killed in Springfield train accidents you can count on one hand; roughly 30 to 40 people per year are killed or sustain very serious injuries in the Springfield metropolitan area after being hit by cars. Yet drivers are not obliged to blow horns when they approach an intersection. Not that blowing horns does much good in protecting people from trains.
Tracks in built-up areas are equipped with signs and whistles and bells and gates and fences which are as futile as sermons from the pulpit in encouraging good behavior. Most “accidents” are caused by clueless drivers, heedless kids, reckless teens, hopeless suicides, and drunks of all ages, alike in ignoring warnings of danger. The Federal Railroad Administration reports that in more than 95 percent of such cases the victim ignored warnings or was unlawfully on railroad property. Yet the horns keep blowing. Why? Because in the U.S., railroad companies are generally not held liable for deaths or injuries that occur when individuals fail to take reasonable precautions near train tracks, but they can be held liable if a train crew fails to sound its horn.
The fact that horns blow is not what keeps me awake, however. It’s that they seem to never stop blowing. Illinois law does not require that freight trains slow down when passing through residential zones – schedules! Because the distances between at-grade crossings in the rail corridors like Third Street are short, trains moving at a profitable clip must blow their horns almost constantly. We’re used to that from legislators and governors but politicians at least shut up at the end of the day; some UP trains are still at it at 4 a.m. The fading noise as the train leaves town is to me like the welcome sound of a boring dinner guest walking down your stairs. And yes, you can hear them from that far away. At 90-120 db a train horn is almost as loud as a jet airliner engine and can be heard miles away under some atmospheric conditions.
A number of important public issues might be asked by a more industrious commentator than I am. Why, after two tries, was the rail consolidation issue finally addressed in the 2020s after it failed to do so in the 1920s and in the 1970s? The city’s whorish embrace of railroads in the mid-1800s should have taught it that letting profit-seekers build where and what they want incurs costs that can last for generations; how might Springfield avoid making the same mistakes again? And is rail consolidation the best use for the estimated $544 million it will cost? (For half a billion bucks we could shut down Dallman 4 and replace it with solar and wind and battery storage and improve a lot more lives than rail consolidation will.) And who decides such questions?
Someday when I get caught up on my sleep I might take up these questions in earnest. In between trains I dream of the day two years from now when the Springfield Rail Improvement Project completes work and the first UP freight is shunted from Third Street to a new Tenth Street rail corridor and the horns will be silenced, at least between Stanford and Sangamon avenues.
Hallelujah.
For 50 years James Krohe Jr. has chronicled life in Springfield and Illinois for many publications, including (since 1975) Illinois Times. His work can be enjoyed at jameskrohejr.com.
This article appears in November 6-12, 2025.
I held a locomotive engineers license for 38 years and was involved in way too many crossing accidents. Engineers are required by Federal law to sound the horn for 15-20 seconds without regard to the time of day. Engineers can face a personal find for non compliance. While I was working as supervisor of engineers we were required to test engineers for compliance and they could face discipline if the failed to do so. Cities can pass a no horn ordinance but that only makes things more dangerous.