Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow
The Harmonic Chords of a Train Whistle
A freight train rolls by on the tracks, and the engineer pulls the whistle, which reverberates across the river and comes back as an echo. The right combination of speed, the Doppler effect, long and short blasts, and the echo combine with the second whistle blow. Both the harmonic train horn and the echoed train horn play in synchrony, one blowing back as the train rumbles forward, one bouncing back from the hills as morning fishermen ply their boats between the sounds of a horn from two river banks.
The humidity and dissipating marine cover must have been just right because the river and the hills reflect the sound, a sound that someone could have marveled at one hundred years ago while walking along the river.
Most train whistles in this country are in a minor key. It’s why we hear that lonesome whistle blow, which is not just a safety feature but a signal to the past, to nostalgia, to physics, to musicians, to people with wanderlust, and the cymbals, or symbols, of distance.
Train whistles could tune to a major chord as well as a minor chord, but a minor chord seems right. Except in some European countries, where the chord introduces the first known notes of a major symphony.
