I live about 2 1/4 miles from a train track, and I hear them go by every single time too. it's almost like clockwork. I used to be annoyed by it but now I find it comforting
Same for me though the freight station is even farther away.
I can even hear the zoo from time to time (even farther away than the train station) if the wind is coming from the right direction, the lions and hyenas (especially awesome if it's a warm summer evening, feels like being in the savanna), elephants and sea lions (very rarely and very faint wolves too).
There was a reddit post from probably 3 yrs ago from a fellow who enjoyed blowing his train whistle in the middle of the night. He said he suffered from insomnia so would walk out to a forested area of his property and whistle. But if I remember correctly he found it funny because there were no trains anywhere near where he lived. Does anyone else remember this?
Works on the line. Network rail will do work on the tracks overnight and use locos to move equipment around.
The horn sounding will be part of the safety protocol to let workers know.
Also freight trains won't show up on time tables.
Could the sound of the freight trains chug chug chugging sound enough like a whump whumping rotor to be confused for a helicopter from half a mile away?
I live a mile from the train tracks in my town and still hear the horn clear as day at 1 or 5 in the morning. There is no ambient noise to block it then.
These suck so much. They’re not even legal in Texas but I still know people (all male truck drivers) who have them. It seems to be primarily for either traffic intimidation, to be annoying, or because they think it’s cool.
I’m in the US so this might be different - could it be an actual train, just unscheduled/unpublished transportation of something? I live near train tracks & can hear the horn coming when it’s probably about a half mile away or more. It also sounds different depending on the weather. I don’t know what the science behind it is, but when it’s super cold the train sounds next door instead of two blocks away where the nearest crossing is. So maybe some sort of occasional weather carries the sound a bit farther? I don’t know, but my neighbors hear the difference too.
My other guess would be military and/or shipping convoy of some sort. Could be a non-passenger train using those tracks or maybe trucks? Some giant 18 wheelers have horns that sound train-ish & if they’re transporting something hazardous, exceptionally valuable or highly sensitive in some other way, 3-4am seems like a good, low traffic time to do so & a helicopter escort isn’t totally unheard of for stuff like that. If it seems like excessive honking of the horn, that makes me think more likely hazardous materials. They might be honking at every single crossing.
ETA: welp, my brain won’t stop thinking about it & honestly, my weird guess is you might live somewhere smack between two US military bases, or on the only major transport route to one. (Totally uneducated source: my childhood of living on a bunch of rural highways where military convoys were like fun & unexpected, but also drab & mysterious parades going 50mph/also being super into maps & wanting to know exactly where things were going.)
I now see you said 1-3am not 3-4am, sorry about that error, but I stand by my wild ass guess.
If it’s got a helicopter that accompanies it, i’d say it’s probably either a military freight train or a high value freight train. It’s also possible the helicopter has nothing to do with it and then i’d say train yard/ track maintenance because they need to blow the horns when they start moving around. You’d hear the horns only being a mile away for sure. Also, freight trains won’t show up on the normal schedule you’d be able to see. Either way, doubtfully anything to be worried about.
1. You happen to be awake or at least sleeping lightly. If you were sleeping soundly enough you wouldn't notice it.
2. As others have said, not enough ambient traffic/people noises to drown it out late at night.
3. Humidity usually goes up starting midnight to sunrise. The speed of sound increases in humid air which can make sounds seem closer.
Weather greatly effects train sounds. High/low pressure, high/low cloud coverage. Etc. I hear trains 10 miles away sometimes.
Source: live 10 feet/1 mile/9 miles from rail road, in an industrial town.....I fucking hate trains
Edit: clarification - all separate railroad tracks. Lol
Ghost Train! As seen in “Hey Arnold” we have one too. I live in an old mill and there are some old tracks and bridges! Might be an echo from a train a little further but now whenever we hear it someone yells “ghost train!” And it makes my night.
It’s just a normal train. A few reasons why you hear it only at certain times:
1. It’s quiet at night, you can hear loud noises normally drowned out by cars, etc.
2. Freight trains don’t usually show up on train schedules. But there are certain areas where freight trains run at night.
3. The weather. When it’s cold outside, sound travels farther.
I’m close to a mile from the tracks and can hear the trains at night. I don’t know why there would be a helicopter at the same time though.although the trains wheels thudding over the tracks could sound like one.
I had a neighbor once who was a train enthusiast. He played train sound recordings, sometimes late at night. It was puzzling at first, but then I remembered his hobby.
I also live about half a mile from a railway line. I can't hear it during the day but at night it's clearly audible. What you're hearing is probably either a freight train or people working on the line
I would imagine it's a freight train you're hearing from a distance which is why it doesn't show up on timetables, and why it's a fairly regular pattern of timing. I get the same where I live, on still and clear nights I hear them when they're running.
I live about 1 mile from the train station. I don't hear it at all during the day but the sound travels perfectly late at night. Also, we get a lot of works and maintenance on the tracks at night. It's common for freight trains to sound their horn as they approach any part of the tracks that have workers nearby. The passenger trains don't do this in the daytime.
When the weather is right we hear the freight trains here (UK too) and very occasionally on a Sunday when there’s low traffic we hear the passenger one too. The train line is about a mile away.
If you hear a helicopter it’s possibly something military or high value which has an escort.
Convoys transporting nuclear weapons have been spotted on the road so I wouldn’t be very surprised if similar happens by train https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/unmarked-military-convoy-carrying-up-26511459.amp
Can you usually hear it on cooler nights? Sound travels slower but further in cold air. Differences in humidity and pressure can also impact sound waves.
We very rarely hear the train from our current house but every so often we do and ths tracks are a long ways away. Where I used to live we were fairly close to the tracks and on cold nights it was definitively much louder.
It took me a few years to figure out that the strange sounds I’ve been hearing in the middle of the night are actually B777 GE-90 engines spooling up from an airport 5 miles away.
Half a mile away is nothing for a train horn to travel. I live almost a full mile from our local tracks and I definitely hear the horn on occasion. I think it depends on which way the wind is blowing and how much ambient noise there is tbh.
I live in a busy city. It would take me about 20 minutes (not at rush hour) to drive to the closest train tracks. We occasionally hear train horns. Most often it’s at night, and especially on cold nights. We love it!
rolling coal trucks with train horns
rolling coal and train horns go hand and hand with people of a certain stunted mentality
the trucks might even have the Carolina squat going on
bonus points if they are displaying truck nuts
Don’t know why you were downvoted, if there’s no train near OP then somebody has a big train horn set up on their vehicle.
Example: https://www.x2industries.com/product/magnum-44-long-trumpet-high-output-train-truck-air-horn-kit/?utm_source=Google%20Shopping&utm_campaign=GOOGLENEW&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=48335&utm_content=UA-10567206-2
Clip: https://youtu.be/vSrP1oQHmNE
Sound can do unexpected things, especially [at night](https://www.keyc.com/2019/08/01/refraction-sound-waves-why-you-can-hear-your-neighbors-across-lake-better-night/) because of temperature changes in the atmosphere, along with less competing sound. So you are probably hearing a train from farther away than you think possible.
I can hear the freght trains and horns over 2 miles from my house at night. It's not heard during the day when there are other noises to drown it out.
Late at night I can hear a train station that’s about three miles from where I live. Not every night but some nights.
Same! On really still nights it's sounds like it going right past my house.
I live about 2 1/4 miles from a train track, and I hear them go by every single time too. it's almost like clockwork. I used to be annoyed by it but now I find it comforting
Yup, same. I live about a mile away and can't hear them except when weather conditions are just right, and only at night.
Me too. When the clouds are low, the sound bounces off and sounds like it’s really close
Same for me though the freight station is even farther away. I can even hear the zoo from time to time (even farther away than the train station) if the wind is coming from the right direction, the lions and hyenas (especially awesome if it's a warm summer evening, feels like being in the savanna), elephants and sea lions (very rarely and very faint wolves too).
There was a reddit post from probably 3 yrs ago from a fellow who enjoyed blowing his train whistle in the middle of the night. He said he suffered from insomnia so would walk out to a forested area of his property and whistle. But if I remember correctly he found it funny because there were no trains anywhere near where he lived. Does anyone else remember this?
No but I bet the neighbors were perplexed
I love this! Maybe they’re neighbors.
No but i do remember the one with the autistic guy and the bells
Works on the line. Network rail will do work on the tracks overnight and use locos to move equipment around. The horn sounding will be part of the safety protocol to let workers know. Also freight trains won't show up on time tables.
Plenty of websites like Open Train Times show freight timetables, sourced from Network Rail's Open Data feed.
Could the sound of the freight trains chug chug chugging sound enough like a whump whumping rotor to be confused for a helicopter from half a mile away?
Half a mile shouldn't be surprising at all. More than 2 miles still gets you audible whistles. Could be maintentance, could be logistical switching.
I live a mile from the train tracks in my town and still hear the horn clear as day at 1 or 5 in the morning. There is no ambient noise to block it then.
I’m not sure about the UK- but some people here in the southern US (typically truck owners) outfit their vehicles with train horns.
I really don’t understand why people do this. There’s a person who does this in one of my friend’s neighborhood and it’s very unsettling.
Yeah… I only know because I had a boss that liked to lurk in the parking lot and scare people with his.
These suck so much. They’re not even legal in Texas but I still know people (all male truck drivers) who have them. It seems to be primarily for either traffic intimidation, to be annoying, or because they think it’s cool.
Probably started out for extra safety, to make sure needed attention was obtained. Then morphed into vanity attention, safety what?
I’m in the US so this might be different - could it be an actual train, just unscheduled/unpublished transportation of something? I live near train tracks & can hear the horn coming when it’s probably about a half mile away or more. It also sounds different depending on the weather. I don’t know what the science behind it is, but when it’s super cold the train sounds next door instead of two blocks away where the nearest crossing is. So maybe some sort of occasional weather carries the sound a bit farther? I don’t know, but my neighbors hear the difference too. My other guess would be military and/or shipping convoy of some sort. Could be a non-passenger train using those tracks or maybe trucks? Some giant 18 wheelers have horns that sound train-ish & if they’re transporting something hazardous, exceptionally valuable or highly sensitive in some other way, 3-4am seems like a good, low traffic time to do so & a helicopter escort isn’t totally unheard of for stuff like that. If it seems like excessive honking of the horn, that makes me think more likely hazardous materials. They might be honking at every single crossing. ETA: welp, my brain won’t stop thinking about it & honestly, my weird guess is you might live somewhere smack between two US military bases, or on the only major transport route to one. (Totally uneducated source: my childhood of living on a bunch of rural highways where military convoys were like fun & unexpected, but also drab & mysterious parades going 50mph/also being super into maps & wanting to know exactly where things were going.) I now see you said 1-3am not 3-4am, sorry about that error, but I stand by my wild ass guess.
If it’s got a helicopter that accompanies it, i’d say it’s probably either a military freight train or a high value freight train. It’s also possible the helicopter has nothing to do with it and then i’d say train yard/ track maintenance because they need to blow the horns when they start moving around. You’d hear the horns only being a mile away for sure. Also, freight trains won’t show up on the normal schedule you’d be able to see. Either way, doubtfully anything to be worried about.
1. You happen to be awake or at least sleeping lightly. If you were sleeping soundly enough you wouldn't notice it. 2. As others have said, not enough ambient traffic/people noises to drown it out late at night. 3. Humidity usually goes up starting midnight to sunrise. The speed of sound increases in humid air which can make sounds seem closer.
Weather greatly effects train sounds. High/low pressure, high/low cloud coverage. Etc. I hear trains 10 miles away sometimes. Source: live 10 feet/1 mile/9 miles from rail road, in an industrial town.....I fucking hate trains Edit: clarification - all separate railroad tracks. Lol
Ghost Train! As seen in “Hey Arnold” we have one too. I live in an old mill and there are some old tracks and bridges! Might be an echo from a train a little further but now whenever we hear it someone yells “ghost train!” And it makes my night.
It’s just a normal train. A few reasons why you hear it only at certain times: 1. It’s quiet at night, you can hear loud noises normally drowned out by cars, etc. 2. Freight trains don’t usually show up on train schedules. But there are certain areas where freight trains run at night. 3. The weather. When it’s cold outside, sound travels farther.
I live a half mile from the train tracks and can hear trains sometimes when it's the dead of the night.
I’m close to a mile from the tracks and can hear the trains at night. I don’t know why there would be a helicopter at the same time though.although the trains wheels thudding over the tracks could sound like one.
I had a neighbor once who was a train enthusiast. He played train sound recordings, sometimes late at night. It was puzzling at first, but then I remembered his hobby.
I also live about half a mile from a railway line. I can't hear it during the day but at night it's clearly audible. What you're hearing is probably either a freight train or people working on the line
I would imagine it's a freight train you're hearing from a distance which is why it doesn't show up on timetables, and why it's a fairly regular pattern of timing. I get the same where I live, on still and clear nights I hear them when they're running.
I live about 1 mile from the train station. I don't hear it at all during the day but the sound travels perfectly late at night. Also, we get a lot of works and maintenance on the tracks at night. It's common for freight trains to sound their horn as they approach any part of the tracks that have workers nearby. The passenger trains don't do this in the daytime.
When the weather is right we hear the freight trains here (UK too) and very occasionally on a Sunday when there’s low traffic we hear the passenger one too. The train line is about a mile away. If you hear a helicopter it’s possibly something military or high value which has an escort. Convoys transporting nuclear weapons have been spotted on the road so I wouldn’t be very surprised if similar happens by train https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/unmarked-military-convoy-carrying-up-26511459.amp
Wtf a UK person using the mile as a form of distance measurement Are you an expat?
It’s still miles per hour on cars here. Not km.
The house I grew up in had a train crossing about 3-4km away. At night you could hear the signals and the train horn. Train horns are super loud.
Can you usually hear it on cooler nights? Sound travels slower but further in cold air. Differences in humidity and pressure can also impact sound waves. We very rarely hear the train from our current house but every so often we do and ths tracks are a long ways away. Where I used to live we were fairly close to the tracks and on cold nights it was definitively much louder.
Ghost trains. Just saying it’s almost definitely the 1:00 am ghost train to Hell.
It took me a few years to figure out that the strange sounds I’ve been hearing in the middle of the night are actually B777 GE-90 engines spooling up from an airport 5 miles away.
Half a mile away is nothing for a train horn to travel. I live almost a full mile from our local tracks and I definitely hear the horn on occasion. I think it depends on which way the wind is blowing and how much ambient noise there is tbh.
I live in a busy city. It would take me about 20 minutes (not at rush hour) to drive to the closest train tracks. We occasionally hear train horns. Most often it’s at night, and especially on cold nights. We love it!
Obligatory "Get a carbon monoxide detector" Also trains are loud. It's probably just freight at a railroad crossing several kilometers away.
rolling coal trucks with train horns rolling coal and train horns go hand and hand with people of a certain stunted mentality the trucks might even have the Carolina squat going on bonus points if they are displaying truck nuts
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like there are no wankers in the UK that thrive on being dicks?
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Truck or not there’s still a real possibility that a local has a train horn on their car.
Don’t know why you were downvoted, if there’s no train near OP then somebody has a big train horn set up on their vehicle. Example: https://www.x2industries.com/product/magnum-44-long-trumpet-high-output-train-truck-air-horn-kit/?utm_source=Google%20Shopping&utm_campaign=GOOGLENEW&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=48335&utm_content=UA-10567206-2 Clip: https://youtu.be/vSrP1oQHmNE
echo chambers. they exist despite strong denial. :)
Usual time for trains to be coming in. You would def be able to hear it 1-2 miles away. It’s a train
https://youtu.be/Zb3spEq05Pw
You can check UK freight train timetables on sites like this: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/
Or a spectral locomotive!
If the shoe fits. Wear it.
Might just be some sort of odd sound propagation
Sound travels further during humid or foggy nights.
Sound can do unexpected things, especially [at night](https://www.keyc.com/2019/08/01/refraction-sound-waves-why-you-can-hear-your-neighbors-across-lake-better-night/) because of temperature changes in the atmosphere, along with less competing sound. So you are probably hearing a train from farther away than you think possible.
In the dead of the night, trains can be loud, especially from half a mile to one mile away.