<p>I really enjoy watching freight trains at night ,when they rumble by .I love the way the horn sounds a little before the crossing guard starts making that ting ting sound .It’s such rush as they clack by ,almost as good as a roller coaster ride .I didn’t grow up around trains ,so they are a novelty to me on the east coast .Am I the only one who likes this ? My H and 4 kids think so .Prove me wrong !</p>
<p>Freight trains go by a block from my house. If I look out my upstairs windows I can watch them go by. Those horns are annoying. You get used to them after a week or so though.</p>
<p>fendergirl -sounds as if you put up with trains . Thanks for responding . I don’t live now near any trains ,which is probably why I enjoy them !</p>
<p>When I was little my dad dated a train engineer, and I got to drive one! By which I mean, I got to move the lever that makes it go faster or slower. I drove it something like 50 feet. It’s one of my most vivid and best childhood memories. 
Her name was Nancy and she had red hair, and I wished that my dad would marry her, but he didn’t. 
Come to think of it, I don’t know if she was an engineer, but she worked for the railroad and had access to trains.</p>
<p>fauxmaven, you should get an apartment in Chicago that faces the El tracks, like in the Blues Brothers. Then you could count the trains all day and night!</p>
<p>The coyotes by us start to sing about 30 seconds before we hear the train. </p>
<p>I like trains. My grandfather was an inspector on the Canadian Pacific and his brothers all work on the trains, so it is in my blood. I often have to wait for a long train and rather than stress out about losing time, I try and relax and watch the cars. I turn off the radio and open the window so I can hear the noises better.</p>
<p>Lol, in the midwest we experience alot of trains! But light rails might be taking them over.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC App</p>
<p>we have lots of trains come thru here -as we are the center of the universe 
so many that most Memphians HATE trains - getting stuck in traffic etc</p>
<p>when my son was little I was take him out of his carseat to come in the front seat and watch the choo-choo… thanks for the memory!</p>
<p>I adore hearing the train horn, I can hear it and sense the rumble of the train, 5-10 miles away, at night. When we first moved to this house, I would ask DH, “What’s that” at about 1-3AM (not awakened by it, just on the odd night we were still up) and we figured out it was the distant bass rumble of the train. It is very faint, almost a sensation more than a sound. Then the mournful horn, I don’t know why I love it so!</p>
<p>Trains are a fact of life in my household. There is a set of tracks that runs parallel to my street, and they go by all of the time. I’ve been living in this place since I was 5 years old so I don’t even hear them anymore unless they blow the horn a few times. It’s always funny when guests are over and they freak out for a bit because a train is going by and they don’t realize what it is. </p>
<p>A tip for living by the tracks: make sure your breakables are away from the edges of shelves and periodically push them back, because the vibrations make them migrate slowly over time.</p>
<p>This thread makes me think of the movie “My Cousin Vinny” when they are in the hotel lol
I have always lived within distant ear shot of commuter trains and there is something soothing about the horns and hum of the trains especially at night.</p>
<p>I grew up next to a train that rattled the whole house several times a day,.</p>
<p>I thought my first earthquake was a train.</p>
<p>Well ,I see there are alot of people who enjoy train SOUNDS . Does anyone go out of their was to see trains ? Perhaps my family is correct . I found a motel where trains go by all the time , and we are spending a night there just to get some train action ,on the way to visit one of our kids . It is hard to find a safe spot at night to watch trains in our neck of the woods ( light rail doesn’t do it -it has to be freight trains- better clicketty clack ! ) I often dream about freight trains as well . I love the sounds and the approaching light at night .</p>
<p>I used to count freight cars when I was a kid, I remember some trains were more than 300 cars long. The Great Northern cars were my favorites (they had animals on them as part of the logo). </p>
<p>These days when I count cars on the siding near our office, I notice that they were very short for a few years – 2008 had some that were only 40 or 50 cars — but they are getting longer again, and I scored my first 100-plus train in a LONG time recently when I was in rural Kansas a few weeks ago (Robinson, Kansas, where my great, great grandfather built a stone barn that is still standing). </p>
<p>I assume that if you graphed freight train length against some economic indicators, you’d get a straight line.</p>
<p>fauxmaven- Rest assured…there are LOTS of people who watch trains and, in fact, know the schedules and which engines are on each route. I was a lawyer for a major transcontinental railroad (awesome job) and we called these people “rail fans”. They could be a problem. Most of them wanted to see and photograph the trains, but sometimes they got too close to the tracks or otherwise interfered with operations. The things they knew about the trains was amazing.</p>
<p>I love trains and learned a lot while working for the railroad. We actually got an opportunity to buy some old items from the passenger trains after AMTRAK took over passenger operations. There were linens, silver pieces, decorative items, candy dishes etc. available dirt cheap. I have a few items that I cherish. </p>
<p>I also got to ride the passenger trains (heading downhill rapidly by then) at a discount (or free if a business trip) and had drinks in the bar car with Joe Walsh (Eagles) and his girlfriend one evening. </p>
<p>I am still fascinated by trains.</p>
<p>One of the best things about listening to a Seattle Mariner’s Baseball game on the radio is listening to the train whistles as the trains rumble pass the stadium.</p>
<p>There was a train track that ran behind the house I grew up. The train passed through every night around nine o’clock. Every time I hear a train I think of lying in my bed at night as a kid and hearing that train… like an old friend who came by every night to say good night.</p>
<p>Now I have a house on a river in the middle of nowhere…very quiet here. There’s a train that runs just on the other side of the river, still love hearing the whistle and the sounds of the rails on the tracks carrying across the water.</p>
<p>One city with many trains passing through is Columbia, SC.</p>
<p>We noticed them when my daughter was a student at the university there – the old railway station also has a good restaurant (actually, come to think of it, two of the restaurants we ate in had railway related history…)</p>
<p>When I was young and we used to stay at my grandma’s in the summer we could see the trains from the back window. Whenever we heard them coming we would run to the window to watch. We especially got excited when it was an Amtrak train. We had fun counting the cars on the freight trains and I thought the caboose was really cool!</p>
<p>We lived a couple of blocks from tracks when I was very small. All us kids would go down when the freight trains came by and shout for sugar beets. The guys riding the cars (hobos or guards…I don’t know) would toss them to us as the trains went by.</p>