[yarddog]

You are right, the wind does influence how sound can be heard, tho I have no idea why.

As someone pointed out, the speed of sound is far faster than any wind but apparently that is not the whole story.

[rabidralph]

I'm thinking the train conductors move the horn around the length of the train on regular basis, just to confuse us. But why should they have all the fun?

[SamAdams76]

I live about 5 miles away from a railroad crossing and every now and then, I hear the train whistle like it was coming through my back yard. It's really eerie how this only happens every once in a while. Most of the time, I forget all about the fact that there is a railroad nearby because I usually never hear it.

It happened again just a few minutes ago so I googled "train whistle at night" and this thread popped up as one of the first results. So I thought it odd that this thread started only about a month ago.