The silence of the trains

How the train lost its whistle.

We need to write more about trains, about how the Eurail Pass has gone from a cheap, simple way to travel to an expensive package deal best used by people with a degree in logistics.

But today's post is about the silencing of trains.

There was a recent news article about how trains in the Rhine River Valley had gone silent.

No more blowing the whistle when they approach level crossings, or when they pass a station without stopping, no more whistle in fall when people with heavy packs cross the tracks to take grapes from the few remaining steep slope vineyards to the tractors.

Just silence.

We read with a certain degree of disbelief how the valley folks had been fighting for decades to silence the trains. But, if you think about, it is understandable.

On the few occasions over here when we actually heard a train whistle, the difference in the sound frequency to US trains was striking.

While modern American locomotives sound very similar to the old steam whistle, the trains around here offer ear-piercing frequencies. Maybe a little too effective for the ears of an aging population.

Progress in engineering has also made the locomotives and the train cars much less noisy and rumbling. The ground shaking under your feet a quarter of a mile away from the tracks, that feeling is gone. The thumping noise of the wheels hitting the spaces between track segments, gone.

Not satisfied with their accomplishments, the valley folks are now fighting for noise abatement walls along the tracks.

Their most recent quest is for a tunnel, a huge, many miles long dig designed to simply move the trains away from the river and into a mountain. 
Ask any big infrastructure planner and he will frown and jot down a two digit billion figure the tunnel.

Costs will be shared between the rail network owner and the taxpayer.

If you have a train ride through the romantic part of the Rhine River valley on your bucket list, go soon. Once you are in the tunnel you won't see the Loreley from the train unless the train has onboard wireless access and you can look at Loreley photos on the internet.