What is The History Of A Train Horn?

Are you kidding me? Instead of blasting your friends away at the mall, you want to know the history of a train horn. Ok Poindexter, after we tell you this we’ll also show you what your $%^# is for…but anyway….

As locomotives (that’s a train mullet head) began to become more powerful and as steam operated trains become increasingly inefficient, trains were fitted with horns that were powered by their own exhaust. For obvious reasons, not the least of which was the belly-aching tree-huggers, these train horns were phased out in favor of the air horn being utilized on big rigs then modified to be a helluva lot louder.

I guess they figured if you couldn’t see a 1,000 ton train barreling down on you or didn’t realize what the fancy bells and red lights meant, then maybe you might hear the blast of the train horn it before you were vaporized by the impact.

We checked in the archives of the National Train Horns Museum and found out that Westinghouse was probably one of the earliest manufacturers of train horns in the modern era after the steam horn went the way of the dodo bird (you do know what that is …don’t ya?). Oh by the way…there is no train horn museum but we figured if you wanted to know the history of the train horn then we would make it sound all official for you.

In 1949 this dude named Robert Swanson, who was an inventor, decided he wanted to up the ante on train horns. Instead of a train horn just blasting one loud as blast. Swanson, who might have been a visionary, designed a train horn that could play six notes per blast. Then he refined it with Chinese technology to play a very sweet 5 notes per blast…then he died. Well not really, he moved to Canada somewhere and word has it gave up train horns for a gig on Dancing With The Stars..but that’s another story altogether.

Thankfully, now we have our simple loud ass train horns as the world knows today. Buy one here on Train Horns Direct.

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