Yup I know exactly what you mean. I grew up across the street from a small switch yard. There was an old SW or Alco S-3/4 stationed there. I was quite young, perhaps 4 years old when we moved away, but I remember the clunking of the freight cars, and the rumbling, gurgling sounds of the locomotive. Nobody cared about the rattling or the horn tooting, and my dad used to bring me over to the fence to watch the trains, thus, hooking me on to steel wheels on steel rails forever. We also used to take the Budd RDCs (Buddliners) to Boston. That distinctive odor of diesel exhaust was inside the cars as well as all over and I always associated that with the smell of locomotives. The big treat was catching the Alouette to Montreal in North Station. I'm saying that now because the Gull was long gone by the early to mid-1960s. The train either had a B&M E8, or sometimes a CNR E8. I would be quite exciting seeing the cool train at the platforms when we pulled in. That was quite a treat!
We then moved away from there to a nearly railroad-less town. Sure there was a small branch to serve some mills, but that branch saw perhaps a boxcar every few months if that while we lived there. Dad worked in Boston though and we would go to Bradford (Haverhill where I live today, but across the river) to pick him up at the depot. In warmer weather I would wait for him on the platform, and between the odor of creosote, ballast, and diesel smoke, I was hooked forever.
But that sound of Geeps. Yes. When we moved to Andover, where I lived for nearly 30-years, the B&M mainline ran through just as it does through Bradford and Haverhill proper. We were about a mile from the railroad tracks and the depot, but I could hear the Geeps work hard bringing the freights up grade out of Lawrence south through Andover. There was also a long yard lead at Shawsheen, (Frye) and they would burble, gurgle, and make Geep sounds, which I could hear quite well and even louder when the wind was right. Andover also has a few crossings, which used to be blown for. The would start in Lowell Jct. then blow for Ballardvale, the cemetery, and then Essex Street near Andover depot.
Then sadly in 1997, the NIMBYs moved in to condos next to the railroad, complained about the horns, and the crossings became quiet zones. The camps were pretty strong during the fight for and against the quiet zones, but the rich NIMBYs won with the spiffy lawyers and money to spend on quiet railroad crossings. The Geeps also nearly disappeared too. By that time, Guilford had done its damage to the rail traffic, which fell off substantially and has never recovered so the freights became infrequent, and mostly in the wee hours of the morning so they're no longer heard. Pan Am Railways runs the freights now which sneak through around 5:00 am just before the first commuter trains start a few minutes later. I still hear the freights sometimes if I'm awake or stirring in the wee hours as it passes through Plaistow, Rosemont, then on sough and west on its way to where ever. It's not the same as it was though. They definitely are a lot quieter now.
