by: Pete Johnson
Hello,
I’m curious as to why a train near your train yard in
Northeast DC blew its loud whistle for such a long time at around 9pm last
night. It was annoying, sure, but I’m more just genuinely curious as to why it
would seem necessary to blow a train’s whistle for what felt like 20 minutes
straight. I’m sure it was more like 2-3 minutes, but still, it was a long time
and the reasoning escapes me. I could
hear the train moving, and not particularly slowly. If it was to warn
someone/thing that was on the tracks that a train was coming, it really seems
like in that amount of time the train would have just hit it already. If a
train hits a deer is it Amtrak policy to lay on the whistle for an hour to
honor its noble life being sacrificed to the destructive whims mankind calls
progress? That would be kind of nice actually, I could live with that. There
aren’t that many deer in my neighborhood.
My wife
went on Nextdoor, which, don’t ever go on Nextdoor. It’s like if you took all
the bad parts of Facebook and turned up the volume on them and also now all of
your annoying Facebook friends live in your actual neighborhood and have the
potential to murder you. So she found out sometimes train whistles happen in
our neighborhood and people think it’s because kids cut holes in the chain link
fence and go on the train tracks. That sounds about right, but still, why so
long? I think what probably happened is there was someone on the tracks so the conductor
blew the whistle, the person got off the tracks and the train passed them just
fine, but then the conductor kept right on whistling out of indignation at
someone being on the tracks. Is that what this was? Is there an angry conductor
out there holding whistles down too long for their own emotional benefit? Every
time an Amtrak employee hears a long train whistle do they sigh and think “damn
it Howard, give it a fucking rest”? If so could you tell Howard to knock it
off?
Anyway, how
are you, person that has to read Amtrak customer questions? I feel like I’m
talking about me a lot. I bet you get a lot of dumb questions on here. I bet it
gets pretty grating to type the same polite translation of ‘google it yourself’
and ‘no, you entitled prick’ over and over again. I hope this one is at least
entertaining you a little bit. I guess what I’m trying to say is, my wife
hasn’t been feeling well recently. She’ll be ok, it will be fine and
everything, but right now she’s pretty miserable and it’s been tough. The train
didn’t even bother her all that much, although she was trying to sleep. It’s
more just like, I dunno, it’s a new thing I’m dealing with and maybe it’s
throwing me off kilter just enough so that I feel like I want to write a long
thing to a poor Amtrak employee expressing my very specific curiosity about
train physics.
Maybe it
was to cover for a really long fart?
Or maybe it
wasn’t anger at someone being on the tracks, but a different anger. Maybe the
conductor just checked the mini fridge and saw that someone ate their lunch. It
could have just been a mean tweet. It could have been an article ranking the
best episodes of Lost that the conductor REALLY did not agree with. Do
conductors ever whistle out of love? Why not?
In
conclusion, I found the coffee you served on the train I took 4 years ago to be
adequate. I wonder about the most bland, unnecessary comment you’ve ever gotten
in your work. Have you ever read something like “My friend worked for Amtrak 13
years ago and liked it ok” and been like WHAT IN THE WORLD MOTIVATED THIS? I’m
sorry for yelling, you don’t have to answer that. You don’t have to answer any
of this really, you deserve better. There are lots of different trains that
come through my neighborhood- it probably wasn’t even an Amtrak come to think
of it. Well anyway, keep your head up. I’m rooting for you.
