The Sound of Trains

Maybe it doesn’t catch your breath the same way it catches mine. When it’s late, all is quiet, I’m lying in bed… the songs of crickets and tree frogs drift through my window. It’s open because it’s fall, the air is fresh and cool, it’s pleasing to add another blanket and… wait, what was I getting ready to say? Oh yes, the trains.

So the train that passes through our little town at night has a distinctive whistle. I imagine they all do. I don’t know anything about the railway and whistle rules, how that all works. My thought is, the repetitive pattern of the whistle is probably a train code for: “It’s dark. My powerful giant machine is almost at your crossing. She’s way bigger than you, way heavier than you and moving very quickly, so get out of her road!” Anyway, listen, the Engineer’s way of giving us this warning isn’t just willy-nilly toots and whistles to wake up the tenants of our sleepy town. I got this idea that when the trains get close to our crossing, the warning has a particular sound. It’s actually two long blasts of the train whistle, a short blast then another long blast. Every time. Two longs, a short, and another long. Realizing there was actually a distinctive pattern was oddly satisfying to me for some reason. A worthwhile trade off for the lost hours of sleep, I suppose. It took a few of those tossed and turned hours before that restful rhythm and echo of the whistles finally made sense and with that sense came a deep bloom of calmness in my soul. And sleep.

By the way, I noticed something else as well. Not every Engineer “speaks” with the same intensity or accent, I guess I could say. One speaks loudly, forcefully, exaggerated. Engineer #1: two great emphatic blasts, a big apparent pause, a quick short smart toot, another pause, then a single long, mournful final note to finish. Kind of a grandiose, single-instrument, warning symphony.

Engineer, #2: (in my sleepless rambling thoughts, there are only two of these guys), he lets us know he’s approaching the crossing in his own “tooty” accent that causes me to think he is a little bored. Maybe he’s been on the job too many years and is ready for new scenery. Maybe he’s just tired from miles and miles of track. He says, “Tooooot-tooooot-toot-tooooot.” Eight seconds, tops. Maybe even five. Is he even paying attention?

As I’m writing this, however, I hear something new, another type of Engineer accent. Engineer #3. This one must be a newbie. A novice. Maybe still on his 90 day probation. He gives a long, but very tentative, shaky blast, with a frail, wispy ending… then another of the same… wavering, unsure. A super short, kind of jerky middle note, then not quite waiting long enough, he gives the last, trailing end of his unique serenade. I hope he does well and gets some practice.

So I say, all in all, the rocking rhythm of the trains and the sounds I hear them create make me see some things. Not disruptive nighttime noise, not annoying scents of diesel. Not even our collective sleep being disturbed, but I see this: commerce, employment, families being fed by hard, satisfying work. I see people being rewarded for their labors with homes and cars and all the things for which we get up early and stay up late. We are free to pack our lunches, gas up our cars, kiss our spouses goodbye, then hello again. We work. But, please, never let it be all you think or all you do. Enjoy. Create. Live your life to its full, rich, God-given potential. In all the varied ways he offers us. Maybe he’s given us those sleepless nights to imagine more.

The sound of trains. The soothing sounds, the clacking of their great wheels on tracks, the lonely blasts of accented whistles. Those sounds. Have you, like me, wrestled and strained in the dead of night to hear the sound of God’s heart, his rhythmic song lovingly sung over you? Or perhaps it’s a warning blast of the whistle he chooses for you to hear.

In the end, especially the ending of this strange random-ish tale, trains aren’t the only things you can hear on a sleepless night, in your sleepy town if you’re listening with that proverbial restless heart. There are always the sounds of crickets and tree frogs drifting in through your window on the fresh fall air.

But that’s another story…