Wayside Horns are designed to warn motorists on North Murphy Road of trains on the CPKC railroad tracks. Bob Wieland/Murphy Monitor

The mournful – and loud — sound of train horns has resumed along a southern Collin County rail corridor as CPKC, formerly Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern Railroad, resumed freight service March 3.

The rail corridor had been silent since July 2022 while trains were rerouted to allow Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) to work on the 26-mile commuter line traversing seven North Texas cities — Grapevine, Coppell, Dallas, Carrollton, Addison, Richardson and Plano — between DFW Airport and Shiloh Road in Plano. 

The Silver Line across Tarrant, Dallas and Collin Counties is expected to launch in late 2025 to early 2026, said DART spokesperson Jeamy Molina.

Now that DART has completed its construction, freight trains are back on the CPKC tracks and the Federal Railroad Administration regulates when locomotive engineers must repeatedly sound train horns – two long blasts, a short and a long – before the engine or lead car reaches grade crossings. That sequence is also the letter Q in Morse code.

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