Perhaps the only time most people ever listen specifically for the horn, whistle, or bell on an approaching train is at a grade crossing, but those sounds play a key role in safety.  To the engineers, brakemen, and other railway employees, those same sounds come to be a type of audio signature.  They can tell often what type and model of locomotive it is simply by the sound it makes, without ever looking to see it.

How many movies have you ever watched, probably set in a country scene and heard the lonely wail of a steam whistle in the background of a dark of night?  How many times in a movie (or in real life) have you seen a passenger train pulling into a station and the bell is ringing the entire time?

The locomotive bell, which has rung out its warning to all, has gone through a number of changes over the last 100+ years, and the result has led to the evolution of that background sound we so often overlook.

On steam locomotives, the bell was typically made of solid brass and could easily weigh 100 to 200 pounds.  The sound they made approached being a pure, lingering musical note; a simple and fairly slow dingggggg, dingggggg, dingggggg.

Later on diesel locomotives, all the manufacturers switched over to cast steel bells.  The clapper which struck the bell on these was (and still is) operated by compressed air.  Those bells made a distinctive and slightly quicker ch-ding, ch-ding, ch-ding.

Then there are the oddities.  One of those came about in Canada in 1967 until its eventual retirement in 1982.  Canadian National, and later Via, operated the famous Turbotrains primarily between Toronto and Montreal.  These were designed by an aircraft company and so they had to try some new.  The bell on those was the saddest excuse for a melody, turning into a pathetic and fairly rapid dink, dink, dink.  The horn too sounded like it came from another planet, akin to something between a screaming cat and a broken bag pipe.

Even the bell heard at a grade crossing has undergone an evolution of its own.  For decades there was a gong type of steel bell.  For more than a decade, railways have been removing the real mechanical bell and replaced them with a cone shaped electronic speaker which plays a recording of a bell; it’s not even a real bell any longer!  This has been done to reduce operating and maintenance costs, and to eliminate the dangerous situation of a mechanical device failing and not working when it is needed the most. The sound is fake and it has a very electronic tone to it.  All one has to do is to  look at the top if the post of the grade crossing signal to see a cone shape to know if it is a “new bell”.

Fortunately though, there are still a few remaining steam locomotives in operation. To this day, the sound of a steam whistle or the gentle ring of a brass bell, can instantly gather people from miles away just to see an operating locomotive from the past.