[6] Music journalist Simon Vozick-Levinson, writing in a 2020 Rolling Stone article where the song ranked 10th on a list of "The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century", commented on the playful ambiguity of the lyrics, noting that the central image of a train whistle could either sound like "the last trumpet of the apocalypse" or function as a "symbol of music's redemptive power".

[7] Ann Powers, writing for NPR, likewise noted the song's relationship to jazz, favorably comparing Dylan's vocal performance to that of Louis Armstrong, and considering the possibility that the song could be "a sly tribute to Earl 'Fatha' Hines, the jazz great whose stride piano would have fit perfectly in this arrangement, and who was born in Duquesne [Pennsylvania] in 1903".

The mix of sound, train imagery, and allusion gives the track an edge of hyperreality; we aren’t really thinking about Dust Bowl transportation or old-time factory whistles, but we settle into our parallel ideas about history...It’s unclear but irrelevant whether Dylan faces love or apocalypse.

[9] The Sydney Morning Herald named "Duquesne Whistle" one of the "Top five Bob Dylan songs" in a 2021 article, noting that the "jaunty choo-choo shuffle is equal parts joyride and rakish escape plan.

The video intercuts footage of Dylan and a group of younger cohorts walking through downtown Los Angeles with a narrative involving a man's disastrous attempt to court a woman on the same city streets.

The two storylines converge in a final scene where Dylan and his crew literally step over the man's badly beaten body on the sidewalk.

[18] "Duquesne Whistle" was covered by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench on his 2014 debut solo album You Should Be So Lucky.