“I hear a fire-siren”

“I distinctly hear a warbling fire-siren,” I said to myself. I was quietly making my bed last night to the dulcet pipe-organ tones of “With Heart and Voice,” one of my favorite WXXI radio programs.
WXXI, 91.5 FM, is the classical-music radio-station I listen to. It’s publicly supported.
“Pipe-organs don’t warble like that,” I thought. “Is my tiny town testing its fire-siren, but on Sunday night instead of Monday night when I take out my trash?”
I hardly ever hear that fire-siren, since 9-1-1 uses pagers to summon our volunteer firemen. That siren is also our noon whistle, but I’m usually not around to hear it. Other towns do the same, and that’s the only time I hear their sirens.
I waddled into the room where this computer resides. Viola! Railstream is streaming Cresson’s fire-siren.
Cresson is on the west slope of Allegheny Mountain, where the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed that mountain years ago down near Altoona, PA. Station-Inn, a bed-and-breakfast for railfans like me, is trackside in Cresson. Railstream, in cahoots with Station-Inn, installed a streaming webcam looking out on the old Pennsy main, so railfans can watch trains via the Internet.
The railroad is now Norfolk Southern, and Station-Inn was once a trackside hotel. Cresson, near the mountain-top, was once a health resort that promoted mountain air. “Cresson-Springs” is long-gone.
I have that webcam on often, usually when WXXI airs something I can’t stand, like opera. 350-pound stringy-haired blonds screaming “Ride-of-the-Valkyries” at the top of their lungs. Shootings, stabbings, star-crossed lovers in fervent embrace jumping hand-in-hand off castle parapets into roiling ocean.
“26T on One, MO, CLEAR!” That’s train-26T’s engineer calling out the MO signal near Station-Inn. I hear it on my Internet railroad-radio scanner-feed. I already hear 26T approaching the webcam. It’s not visible yet, but will be shortly.
26T’s engineer has his locomotives in Run-Eight, pedal-to-the-metal. 26T is climbing the west slope of Allegheny Mountain.
With Railstream’s Station-Inn webcam I hear everything. Blatting Harleys roaring noisily by, lawnmowers/snow-blowers, and bells of a nearby church. I use ‘em to tell time.
And also Cresson’s fire-siren. Cresson isn’t that large, but takes its fire-department much more seriously than up here. Or so it seems. It’s like that fire-department is what little excitement Cresson has. The railroad is very busy — it’s a main east-west shipping artery with the east-coast megalopolis. Plus the railroad has a maintenance facility in Cresson.
But little else is happening. If not for that railroad, Cresson would be a sleepy little bedroom-burg in PA’s outback. Much like the tiny town I live in = almost forgettable. There are no industries in West Bloomfield, and none but that railroad through Cresson.
So it’s no surprise that fire-department is so vocal. Fire-siren = “We’re still here.” Within minutes I hear screaming firetrucks scurrying about, on-board sirens at full-wail. Sometimes they pass the webcam, lights flashing. That bed-and-breakfast is on a heavily-traveled street. It’s where I hear the Harleys.

• “MO” are the long-ago telegraph call-letters of a railroad tower once at that location. MO is now just crossovers and a signal location, plus where a Corman branch starts — once a Pennsy branch. The railroad is dispatched electronically and by radio from Pittsburgh.