That Weird TikTok Story About The Lambo Wreck Now Has A Train Horn Tie-In
This may be the biggest locomotive horn-related news you read all week
Remember that ridiculous bit of TikTok drama about a car wreck involving a Lamborghini and a what turned out to be a pretty misleading story with lots of convoluted drama? Hopefully, you forgot about it. Well, now I'm asking you to think about it again, because the dude in the Lambo is shaking up the locomotive horn industry, and all you locomotive owners out there better be ready to get your world rocked.
The guy in that Lambo was Matthew Heller, who also happens to be the CEO of HornBlasters, a company that makes incredibly loud air horns for passenger cars and trucks, presumably in an effort to get more of the general public to shit their pants with greater frequency.
I'll admit, at first I just wanted to write up this press release story straight, just take the news about a big shake-up in the locomotive horn world seriously and somberly, but this weird TikTok tie-in is a bit too strange to ignore.
Now, we're told via press release, that the "irreverent Florida-based HornBlasters brand" will be buying one of the longtime mainstays of the locomotive horn industry, the Air Whistles division of Leslie Controls.
Leslie Controls has been building locomotive horns for over 100 years. For example, who among us isn't intimately familiar with the haunting tones of an early '70s Leslie SL-4T on an Amtrak SDP40F?
For most of us, that distinctive blast is the fundamental soundtrack to our lives, right? I mean, sure, a bunch of derailments have made the SDP40F and their SL-4T horns "essentially extinct" today, but still.
Or what about the Leslie Supertyfon line? Surely everyone has a story about a moment in their lives punctuated by the spine-shaking, bladder-voiding, melodious chords of a Supertyfon.
Now, though, this hoary old man of train-hornery, this grand old honker, it's now been taken over by the crazy young go-getters at HornBlasters, zooming around in their Lambos and getting into k-razy hijinx on the TikToks with the kids, and oh man is this going to shake up America's locomotive horn world.
The press release sums it up like this:
"Circor Leslie Controls is America's oldest locomotive horn manufacturer and one of only two companies that produce horns for trains in the US. As a state-of-the-art manufacturer, HornBlasters will pre-make horns with the goal of having them readily available for consumer purchase.
"There is important heritage with the Leslie Controls brand, and we are proud to acquire the assets of their prestigious air whistles division," HornBlasters founder and CEO Matthew Heller says in a statement. "HornBlasters plans to dominate the rail industry and blast it into the 21st century!"
I decided to see how this was playing with the main locomotive horn-owning community, so I headed over to the Railway District in my town and found a trainhorn bar, the Mournful Wail, and went in to see what people thought.
The rail-gridded parking lot was filled with old GE U30Cs, a couple Baldwin DT-6-6-2000s, and a bunch of AC6000CWs, as you'd expect.
The bar was absolutely deafening, with each table having a set of locomotive horns, which were used to signal when patrons wanted to order drinks. The air was filled with the forceful blasts of Westinghouse, Hankock Air Whistles, Nathan/Airchime horns, and, yes, Leslie Tyfons and SuperTyfons.
I approached a well-known local train horn enthusiast (they go by the term "honkers") whose name I couldn't quite catch, and attempted to ask him some questions.
"HOW HAS THE TRAIN HORN COMMUNITY REACTED TO THE NEWS ABOUT HORNBLASTERS BUYING LESLIE'S AIR WHISTLE?" I screamed at the top of my lungs, inches from the honker's ear.
"WHAT? CORNSHAFTERS IS CRYING BECAUSE LESLIE'S HAIR BRISTLES?" the honker replied, via bullhorn.
Stunned by the loudness, I stumbled back into a table with a full set of Westinghouse Wabco AA-2s which were triggered at that very moment, the noise and shockwaves from which burst one of my eardrums and sent me toppling to the floor where my head contacted the peanut-shell-littered concrete with what in any other circumstances would have been an audible thwock.
I awoke many hours later, the bar dark and my body rolled unceremoniously out onto the front stoop. My pants were urine-soaked and my ears are still ringing like there's a smoke alarm jammed in my skull.
I'm still not certain how the honker community feels about the sale, but I'm pretty sure our readers who are also locomotive owners will have strong opinions about a century-old mainstay of the locomotive horn world being bought by automotive-application upstarts, and I look forward to reading them in the comments, because if you try to tell me anything it's not gonna work.