Train Whistles Get My Attention

The whistle of a coming railroad train gets my attention. If I am near our living room window when I hear a train approaching our village, I almost always take the time to watch it roll along the tracks about a block away. I often count the cars. This time of the year is perhaps a good time to turn the clock part of my brain back about 85 years to days of railroad “weed burners.”

         In our little Nebraska village, when the August lawn grass was dry and brittle and a certain “roar”, mixed with the sound of a train whistle, came from the railroad depot area – it was time to make a made dash to the tracks to sit on the top of a wooden fence to watch the annual passage of a “weed burner.”

         It was a big metal contraption with long arms. It moved slowly along the tracks spewing burning oil and flame on the vegetation along the way. The fire was followed with a douse of water to keep the blaze from spreading.

         Now, the job of getting rid of track-side vegetation is probably done with chemicals and without fanfare. There probably is nothing to see.

         But there was a time, when the Burlington weed-burner came through town, seeing it work was very noisy and exciting for me and my buddies.

         But times change. Now there are huge prairie and forest fires just about everywhere. We probably don’t want railroad weed burners starting more fires and filling our skies with smoke.

         It does seem a bit ironic to remember that the same kids who watched the railroad weed-burner destroy the track-side vegetation, in a couple more years, when World War II was in progress, were searching the same railroad property hoping to find wild milkweed pods and floss that were used to make life jackets to save the lives of soldiers, sailors and flyers.