Train horns

Status
Not open for further replies.

JHZR2

Staff member
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
54,940
Location
New Jersey
I was driving down the road today minding my own business, when an idiot in a jacked up pick up truck going in the opposite direction for some reason blared his horn.

I was going in the opposite direction and he was either beside me or slightly behind me when he blew the horn. It sounded exactly like a train horn which is what I'm sure it is considering that he had two vertical exhaust stacks in his pick up truck bed. He must have thought he is a combination of a truck driver and a train engineer.

But man was it loud, dangerously loud. It really made me jump because I wasn't expecting it and it came not in my line of sight.

Train horns on vehicles are dangerous and irresponsible. I really hope that guy gets a big fine at some point.

But I do wonder how much power it draws to run that horn...
 
Yeah, Google train horns; most are full on compressors with several gallon reserve tanks to make them that loud.

And yeah, you gotta be a really ignorant mo-ran to blow them with pride.
 
AFAIK, what he did is illegal, and he'll probably get a ticket for it eventually. There are plenty of videos on the internet of idiots who get their jollies that way.

Edit: what makes it even more weird is that real train horns take up ALOT of space, and like others have said, you need to be able to deliver large volumes of air to them at high pressure for them to sound right, which means the whole train horn system costs literally thousands of dollars.
 
Last edited:
So where I can I get one from an ocean liner?!

That way when I honk the horn, the engine stalls, the windows break and body panels fall off from the vibration!
laugh.gif
 
I've always wanted to get a train horn to put in my backyard. My neighbor has 2 dogs that bark alot and I always figured if I could trigger the horn right when they bark, it would eventually stop them from expressing their dominance. No idea if it would work, but it would make me feel better, which means it would work.

Alot of customized vehicles down here have train horns. I used to have a semi truck type horn hooked up to my old truck, but it wasn't nearly as loud as a train horn. It had a relay and an compressor, but no tank.
 
I've seen a few knuckleheads with actual locomotive horns on their trucks. The ones I saw were made out of cast aluminum and need a serious blast of air to work. They are so loud you feel it through your whole body.

Joel
 
Originally Posted By: bigmike
I've always wanted to get a train horn to put in my backyard. My neighbor has 2 dogs that bark alot and I always figured if I could trigger the horn right when they bark, it would eventually stop them from expressing their dominance. No idea if it would work, but it would make me feel better, which means it would work.

Alot of customized vehicles down here have train horns. I used to have a semi truck type horn hooked up to my old truck, but it wasn't nearly as loud as a train horn. It had a relay and an compressor, but no tank.


When I was a kid, the father of one of the neighbors next to us worked out of town, and usually came home for the weekend. Almost every Sunday they would be out of the house early for church, and then a restaurant, and would also have other activities that their whole family would do together for most of the day. But they would chain up their pit-bull in the back yard and it would bark not stop the entire time they were gone. This went on every Sunday.

So I had a tape recorder and my brother had a guitar amplifier. I put the mike for the tape recorder outside of the window and recorded a whole tape of their dog barking. Then I used some resistors to attenuate the output from the earphone jack and fed that to the guitar amplifier. We put the amplifier in the window and when they came home we cranked it up and played the tape.

They called the police on us because their father wanted to get some sleep before his return trip to work. We told the police that we do not have a dog. That is a recording of their dog, that we have to listen to all day long when they chain it up when they go away for the day. The police went over to their house and explained what they were listing to, to them. They agreed not to chain that dog up in the yard when they were gone, and they never did that again.

Yea, I know, off topic, but a good true story.
 
Last edited:
Find a 40's vintage 6 volt horn and hook it up to your 12 volt system.

You'll get a horn nearly as loud without the compressor. If you don't use it a lot it will last quite a while, even with 12 volts through it. We used to use them on a couple farm tractors that were used for planting. They'd get the attention of the water truck driver nearly a mile away.
 
Your train horn may be at Pepboys, some horn paks come with an assortment so you can toggle a selector switch with many sounds, I think an elephant sound would be good, imho, but I love the train horns, works for me.
 
Originally Posted By: bigmike
I've always wanted to get a train horn to put in my backyard. My neighbor has 2 dogs that bark alot and I always figured if I could trigger the horn right when they bark, it would eventually stop them from expressing their dominance. No idea if it would work, but it would make me feel better, which means it would work.

Alot of customized vehicles down here have train horns. I used to have a semi truck type horn hooked up to my old truck, but it wasn't nearly as loud as a train horn. It had a relay and an compressor, but no tank.


This is why "men" put the train horn on their trucks. A attempt to establish dominance.
 
The first clue to the guys intelligence is the stacks on a pickup. He's not very smart.
 
Big man gotta have a big horn!!! Yeah!!! Git 'er DONE!

Did he "roll coal" on you?

Were you driving your S-10? If so, the reason for the horn blast was to show you he was a big man with a big truck. Can't go big in a small truck!!!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom