Well I'm not quite old enough to remember the days of steam. Although I have been told that there were a few of 'em left when I was very young.

Living here in the middle of the Great Plains, one can on a still, frosty autumn evening hear away off in the distance the sound of a diesel blowing her horn at a crossing. And while it may not do much for those a few years older than I, that sound is about the lomesomest sound I have ever heard.

That sound just sounds like crying to me. But not the kind of crying that makes you feel better. It sounds like the forlorn crying of a broken hearted lover. The metaphore may be a little hackneyed perhaps. Describing such a mournful sound without singing is near impossible for me. It's a sound that pinches inside you. It's a sound that attaches itself indellibly in your memory to a time and a place. And every time you hear that sound, you won't be able to forget that time or that place. That's what a diesel engine's horn sounds like to me.
Jim