In your county or town are there any Houses built too close to the tracks for a “normal” life.
There is House in the Village of VIcksburg, Michigan on Main Street that is less than 25 feet from the Grand Trunk Western/CN mainline and grade crossing. It is abandoned now. When people did live there it never looked comfortable. It would be best if this rotting house were dismantled and the scaps made into something else. Then a new enclosed structure for railroad watching could be built on this trackside lot.
It was way to optimistic for anybody to build a typical house next to such a constantly busy set of railroad tracks. There are on average one to four trains every two hours. That sort of banging and clanging action is not the setting for a good nights sleep.
The best solution for these locations is to make a new structure that is set up for year round, all weather, railroad action viewing and recording. There would have to be cameras on hand to record at all times. There needs to be personal computers to process images and create videos of what everybody records, so it can be shared during lulls in the action. Internet connections for webcams would be great. Automatic cameras and LED arrays for night time recording could be set up on the side of the building. During the day or weekends railfans can see what happens while they are away living the rest of their lives.
Many of those homes were probably built in the era of steam engines, forty foot boxcars, and fifty car trains. How times have changed.
There are a couple of homes still left along a main street in our county seat. At one time, it was a sleepy two lane highway leading out to the towns and villages along the lakeshore. Today, it’s a busy four lane boulevard (five, with the left turn lane) leading from downtown to the mall and the Interstate, and a lot of other businesses that have sprung up all along the road - the new “downtown.” I wouldn’t want to live on that street today. On many most days the traffic is bumper to bumper.
As opposed to those who buy/build a home adjacent to the tracks in the current time, then complain about the noise, I’m pretty sure that with few exceptions, the builders of homes like the one cited didn’t feel the railroad was all that much of an intrusion.
Take a look at many New England and other Northeast towns…industrial and mining towns…take a look at suburban commuter rail lines in any east coast city…and then take a look at the “elevated” rapid transit lines in any given city knowing. See gaps between buildings where a track or set of tracks brushed through…
No one would build that close today…but back then the joy of getting a railroad or getting a service was so great. We lived in towns not in suburbs, so all space was used. Same thing goes for closeness to highway lanes…sylvan lanes turn into four to six lane highways, freeways, and thoroughfares passing by houses not even a sidewalk width distance from the exhaust pipes! At least hopefully we wouldn’t purposely build that way today.
Slightly more realistically - perhaps the local government could acquire it either by a ‘tax sale’ for the likely unpaid taxes or via condemnation, raze/ demolish the structure, and keep the land as ‘open space’ to preserve the ‘sight distances’ for both trains and vehicles at the crossing - which would be a safety improvement.
If the lot then also had a crushed stone parking area installed, that would be fine for me for railfanning - a safe place to park and watch without trespassing.
Beyond that - if there is ever a restoration or extension of passenger service in that area - could it be the site of a future station or flag stop ?
West-southwest of Allentown, PA about 6.8 miles, at Chapmans - Kuhnsville is a little yard on the now Norfolk Southern’s C&F Secondary, with grade crossings at each end - see N 40.59186, W 75.59515, just to the north of State Route 1002 = approx. 6000 West Tilghman Street there. There’s pretty much a permanent switcher stationed there, which serves the nearby industrial park at least 1 and sometimes 2 or more shifts each day, often at night. Along the southwesterly side of that yard, several new ‘stick-framed’ homes were built in the past 10 -15 years - at least 5 of them have rear yards that abut the railroad’s yard. Aside from that, though - what with the mandatory horn signals for the grade crossings - Chapmans Road
Back in the 1970’s I lived at an apartment complex that was right beside the CP ROW here in London ON. My apartment was on the 6th floor and what with the filled trestle height of that ROW put my apartment at a second storey level. I did not have noise issues when I shut my windows at all…
There was a somewhat old house in Nacogdoches, Texas, that had tracks in front and to one side. The tracks in front were pretty much in the front yard, in fact. It was really close, and I always thought if I had kids, I’d never live in that house due to safety issues. I haven’t been there in years, so I don’t know if the house still stands.
Every time I go to work I pass a house that’s about 20 feet from a busy grade crossing (busy as in both rail and road traffic being heavy). The line (between Eindhoven - Maastricht / Heerlen) sees four passenger trains every hour during the day and a about one freight every few hours. This drops to about 2 trains an hour for the better part of the evening and night.
On top of all that misery, they recently opened a new freeway on the other side of the tracks that crosses the tracks on an overpass a few hundred feet from the grade crossing. And to top it all off, the house is situated not half a kilometer from the landfill…
I actually considered buying one of the houses on Spoorlaan Noord (really stately homes, kind of like the canal houses in Amsterdam and The Hague). I quickly decided not to though, I like trains and railroads and living there might have just made me hate them instead…
There are trailer parks scattered all across the continent wherein people’s beds are within 30-50’ of Class 1 mains. One such place is in Ashcroft, BC, where my mother-in-law used to live. We stayed with her a number of times, with the usual CP Rail traffic through the Thompson River canyon passing by hardly noticed. Yeah, if I happened to come half-awake to turn off a blood-deprived arm, I would hear the deep thrumb of a prime mover once in a while, but I don’t recall losing any sleep.
I lived within 500 meters of the flight path, and about 700 meters from the button at Winnipeg International Airport between 90 and 97. Winnipeg is the only airport in Canada that has no curfew, and this is courtesy of Fed Ex and other courier services using The Peg as their hub. You wanna hear noisy…try sleeping at zero dark thrity on a January night where the dense air is at 0 deg F, and an older DC-9 or originally engined 737 is taking off over your head. With that air density and proximity of older jet engines, the whole house shook and rattled.
When I was in Junior High School, we lived about 50 yards from the busy New Haven 4-track main in New Rochelle, NY. It was in our front yard! Way cool! Then they built the New England Thruway just beyond the tracks (used some of the NYW&B property, they did!). We moved! My brother built a new “McMansion” in Chappaqua, NY. He’d go out there, of the weekends, inspect the place and putter around (read: make a mess). When they moved in, they discovered they were under the primary take-off/landing pattern for Westchester County Airport. Didn’t need no stinkin’ alarm clocks! Of course, it was quiet on the weekends, as Westchester is primarily a Business Jetport! IBMers, etc., coming and going. Since then, I have always spent a week, or a month, in any domocile I intended to buy or rent, before making a commitment. I am now 1/4 mile from the BNSF Hi-Line main (30-50 trains per day, depending on the economy) and wish I could get closer, and maybe a bit above it. I can’t see it when our tree is in foliage! Yar!, we have a tree!!! Arbor Day is lonely, out here…
That’s the term the aviators in The Peg used for the (ideal) point of impact on touchdown near the end of the runway, and the point at which aircraft turn sharply and commence their take-off run. It wasn’t so much of a problem if the aircraft had lifted off and were maybe 700 or more feet aloft by the time they flew over the button past our place, but when they entered the runway at the button and began their loud take-off roll at the button (going away from us), our house was only 700 yards away and to the side a bit from the axis, so we really got the thunder.
I learned to sleep though the sound of 100 car freights hitting 50 through an interlocking plant of almost a half dozen or so switches and turnouts less than a quarter of a mile and down about 50 feet from my bedroom window. Also at least two commuter trains an hour blowing for a crossing about a 1/2 mile away, westbound diesel trains (earlier steam) pullling away from a station stop. And often swithcing in and out of sidings on both sides of the railroad. I told time by the trains. But I did sleept pretty much with no problems…
Also, my grandparents lived between the BMT elevated trains on Jamaica Ave. and the LIRR station in Jamica LI…the elevated ran something like 15 minute headways in each direction, so there was probably a train every 7 and a half minutes. Noisey. But you got so used to it, there was no problem sleeping.
You get used to the normal sounds around you, kind of block them out, and you live normally. Often it is the abnormal sounds…whistles from a different direction, hot box or extremely flat wheel or stuck brake, even hitting the low joint with a different cadence, that gets your attention.
It actually took me a while after getting to college with no constant rail action to get into a good sleep pattern because of the lack of the sound of trains!.
Actually, when I was living in Woodstock ON we had a house that was just about equidistant from both the CP and CN mains. It did not matter what time of the day/night it was we heard them. Either CP was switching out the Eureka Foundry at the west end or the Purina mill was being looked after at the CN main. We also heard both the foundry and the Purina plant as well-----
I would think that living next to a railroad at grade is a whole lot better than living the same distance from a late 19th or early 20th century vintage elevated rapid transit line, like the ‘L’ in Chicago or the ‘El’ in NYC. The combination of trains passing over corrugated rail (particularly bad on CTA) plus the resonance of the steel structure can be deafening. When I was a kid, my aunt and her family lived in an apartment right next to the CTA North Side ‘L’ between Belmont and Fullerton. It was fun going on the back porch to watch the parade of CTA and North Shore trains, but the sound was ear-splitting.
For the most part, no one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to live near an obvious source of noise.
I’ve lived near LAX (the airport) for a long time and also was aware that jet noise abatement regulations would (and did) improve things. These days a real estate transaction will have disclosures for those people who can’t see the tracks!
When I was in college my apartment was next to the SP West Valley line in Davis, CA. Train ‘noise’ was rarely noticeable except at harvest time - then the bigger hazard was flying sugar beets!
Daughter just bought a house outside of Syracuse, and away from the flight path of Syracuse Airport. The commercial stuff isn’t too bad where they are moving from, but the AF Reserve F16’s are a tad annoying when they take off on afterburner.
When they first looked at the new house, she called and asked about a railroad bridge nearby. I assured her that while it’s an active line, it’s not busy. Still, there is the possibility I might catch a train there when I visit…
I have a feeling you (railroad) engineered that buy, Tree! But don’t overlook the F16’s. When I rented as house in Springfield, MA in Oct. of 1966 one weekend I was unaware of where I was. The following week after my wife moved in I got a panicked call while at work…seems unbeknownst to me, but anyone from that area at that time, would have knows that the house location was about a mile off the southern runway at Chicopee’s Westover Air Field…B52’s and those giant C’s went over the house and you cuold almost reach up and touch the wheels. She soon settled down. However my problem was that since I was up at 4 in the morning all week long, I loved to sleep at least until 8 or 9 Saturday and Sunday mornings. The National Guard Squadron from Westfield thought different in that they scheduled thier trials and practices beginning at 4 or so weekend morninngs doing touchdowns and takeoffs alternating east and west off the runway…so much for sleeping in over the weekends…And since the NYC’s B&A mainline was at the end of the road, less than a half mile away, it wasn’t so bad afterall!
