Train horns latest vehicle customization fad, irritant on streets
On a February afternoon, five high school students lounged patiently on a bus-stop bench in Westchester, Florida.
Lino Alvarado Jr. slowed his truck to a crawl, smiled, and unleashed more than 150 decibels of sound from a dozen train horns attached to his truck's undercarriage.
"Did you see those kids flinch?" Alvarado, 20, said as he breezed through a stop sign. "But old people are even better."
The students were blasted by one of the area's hottest vehicle customization trends.
A good set of train horns cost about $1,000 and packs an audio punch that can reach hundreds of feet - to the delight of people who buy them, and to the dismay of residents, who are complaining to police.
"It's outrageous and inconsiderate that people blow these horns, and the state should ban these things," said Morris Sunshine, who lives in South Beach, FL. "This is merely a pitiful search for instant celebrity."
Police departments in some cities are stepping up efforts to track down and ticket those blowing the horns. In Miami Beach, FL, police have even arrested one man for blasting his, and intend to arrest more.
Alvarado has received dozens of tickets, spending hundreds of dollars to pay them, but he believes it's worth it.
"It's competition on the street, like when a guy in a truck passes by, he honks his horn, and I honk mine back," he said. "The next time I see him, he doesn't honk his, because he knows mine are bigger and louder."
At close range, the blowing horns are a full-body experience. The blast of air feels like a thin sheet of metal slapping the skin. Ears begin to ring. Even the prepared recoil at the force of sound.
Horn owners gloat.
"Those things are so loud, and they can really get someone's attention," said Pompano Beach, FL, resident Robbie Buckley, 47, who has a set of horns on his truck. "I got them because I'm a kid that never grew up."
Most local customization enthusiasts point to Gabby Szuster, owner of Gabby's Auto Werks in Miami, as the local godfather of the trend. A decade ago, Szuster saw a tractor-trailer truck with a set of train horns and bought them. He found a way to put them under his truck hood, then ran hoses through a hole cut in his floorboard to a manual lever in the truck cab.
"It was the first stage of the invention," Szuster said. "In the second stage, we ended up getting an electronic valve, and then we went from there."
"We figured out ways to make the horns more user-friendly," said Frank Carralero, co-owner of Red's Auto and Truck Customization Shop in Miami.
Red's installs two horn setups. A five-horn set of genuine train horns from the Nathan Manufacturing Co., maker of horn sets for locomotives since at least 1940, costs $2,500. A chromed three-horn set made in Asia, about half as loud as Nathan's, costs $950.
As the popularity of air horns has boomed, companies have begun to make cheaper air-horn kits, some with plastic trumpets and compact compressors.
Serious aficionados scorn them. "Those things are junk," Carralero said.
Red's has installed the horns in everything from a Honda Civic to monstrous show trucks.
"Now, in nine out of 10 trucks we do, we put in at least two sets of train horns," said Steven Menendez, 27, who works at Red's.
Szuster once installed three of the five-horn sets - 15 trumpets - in one truck.
Air-horn owners tell favorite stories about reactions to the powerful sound. There was the time Carralero blew the horn as he drove past a crowded Miami club: A dozen people ducked, then dropped to the pavement in fear.
Or the time Menendez blew his horns at the railroad crossing next to the shop: "All these cars slammed on their brakes because they thought a train was coming. Their wheels were locking up and everything."
Not everyone with the horns blasts them in city streets.
Consider William Martin, 44, who has spent $60,000 customizing his $40,000 F-350 truck, which has tractor-trailer tires, an 18-inch hydraulic lift, Lamborghini-style wing doors, and a plexiglass steering wheel with three-dimensional flames that light up at night.
"If you're going to have a big truck, you have to have big horns to go with it," Martin said. "But it's just not nice to go out there and blow the horns all the time and upset a bunch of folks."
The horns are a new weapon in the noise war in places such as Coconut Grove, FL, and Miami Beach, where motorcycles and car stereos already draw incessant complaints.
"These horns are so much louder than the things we originally complained about, and when you hear them, you sit straight up in bed because it's so unbelievably loud," said Izzy Buholzer, who lives near Grand Avenue, where many young people cruise on weekends. "Sometimes it's like a regular concert out there, with three of these guys blowing at each other."
Buholzer said the noise is making him consider selling his property. "I just can't sleep on weekends," he said.
It's not illegal to have the horns, but it is illegal to blow them, because it violates both the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County noise ordinances.
Police in Coconut Grove and Miami Beach have taken steps to crack down on noise sources, including train horns.
Since November, Miami police have been sending out special officer details in Coconut Grove on weekend nights to enforce the noise ordinance.
Miami Beach police have made catching the horn-blowers a priority, said Sgt. David De la Espriella.
He works in the South Pointe area, where a mix of nightclubs and condos led to the city's most pitched battles over noise.
Realizing that a $70 ticket may not faze someone who spent $2,500 on horns, De la Espriella said, police are taking more extreme measures.
"If one of my officers sees you, and you blow that horn, you will be arrested," he said.
Beach police have also begun to stop vehicles that have the horns, and to warn their drivers of the consequences if they blow them.
Alvarado was one of them, and the risk of arrest keeps him from blowing his horns in South Beach anymore. But he resents the possibility that doing so could land him in jail.
"They should be arresting delinquents, people who are doing something really illegal, like selling drugs," Alvarado said. "I'm just a guy having fun with train horns." - Casey Woods, Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Miami Herald, The Monterey Herald
