air horn rules

I saw two kids walking right in a train on the tracks in thetrn however never blew its horn; how come? I'm wondering what some of the rules arethe horn, in terms and curves. etc.

A person is not very visible from a locomotive, and despite having rules to blow the horn when persons are on or about the tracks, a train may not see you till your about 900 feet in front of that train.
The short of the story is not what rules the train crew did not live up to, but the fact you and other kids were trespassing, and taking your life in your own hands.

DutchRailnut wrote: a train may not see you till your about 900 feet in front of that train.

900 feet??????????????????


Maybe more-----------------maybe alot less!!!!!

A series of short blasts for animals or people on the tracks. I do the short blasts for people even close to the tracks.

You are right about the Con blowing the horn as well. If the engineer cant see the person or is busy thats your job cause your butt can be put in the fire as well if you dont.

I see them at 672 1/2 feet...............

GOLDEN-ARM wrote:I see them at 672 1/2 feet...............

Was that measurement obtained with a metal or fiber tape measure?

What was the temperature at the time?

Was it Sunny? Cloudy? Night?

Is the distance from the face of the coupler or the cab seat?

Is the distance to the center or outside of the targets body?

First question that comes to mind is "are they male or female?

Usually, males are the "idiots".

But, CSX rules don't specify a "distance" as to a "warning" signal except crossings at grade.

And if someone is walking towards me, I figure that they can see my train. If I blow a short blast when I first see them and they don't get out of the way then I tend to think that they're trying to play "chicken".

That being said, after being involved with 4 fatalities, I tend to be a little nervous about folks on or about tracks. Only one was actually in a car, the rest were pedestrian or suicide.

One more thing.

Always been amazing to me about how quiet a train is!

Quite?

Especially on a nice snowy night with a 1/2" of snow on the rail. Deadly quite!

Even more so on CWR

Yes, the engineer should have blasted the horn.

Why didn't he? He may not have seen the kids. He may have had his hands full with other things...radio, setting up for braking, speed restrictions ahead on bulletins; or he may even have been lulled into inattention.

That last is very common, for drivers as well. On the road it's called "highway hypnosis;" persons lulled that way don't react to details as they should. I've come up on country crossings, too close, before realizing I needed to get busy with the whistle...

This is one reason it's importaint to have more than one man on the job. The odds that any engineer on any run will experience it for a few minutes on any run is quite high. The odds that the conductor will be similarly inattentive at the same time is much lower.