Evening comes with the gurgle of Sweetwater Creek. Crickets begin their nighttime chorus. A dog yelps in the gathering dark. Another day comes to a peaceful end.
And then —
Whonk! ... Whonk! ... Whooonk!
Here comes a freight train, a presence as constant as the stars above, as welcome as an earthquake. Such trains, heading to and from a nearby loading terminal, routinely approach this crossing in Powder Springs sounding whistles — or technically, horns — loud enough to cause hearing loss.
Like folks all around metro Atlanta where trains pass by, some people have learned to sleep through the rumble and roar shaking their neighborhoods and businesses in this west Cobb town. Others have complained almost as loudly as the trains themselves.
And like elected officials elsewhere in the metro area, those in Cobb County have heard those complaints.
Last month, the Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved letting Powder Springs spend $474,000 to establish a “quiet zone” with a specialized crossing where Brownsville Road and the train track intersect. The intersection is in the heart of downtown Powder Springs, where trains are a part of daily (and nightly) life. The money will come from a $4 million settlement stemming from a lawsuit with the railroad a decade ago.
Crescent, Star, Southern Flash: Trains, many with colorful names, have long announced themselves in these parts with sustained blasts on whistle or horn. Atlanta was born as a railroad nexus. In some towns with switching yards, residents once knew the time of day by the screech of an approaching behemoth’s whistle. They were celebrated in story and song: Who doesn’t know the first line of “Folsom Prison Blues”?
And so, not everyone is against the sound of the trains. Some Powder Springs residents like the bellow announcing the approach of a train bound for some far-off place. But others say silencing them will improve residents’ quality of life; no one, they say, should have to pause in mid-sentence every time a train comes by.
John Stefero, who moved to Powder Springs three years ago, would like a little more quiet. He lives in Sweetwater Landing, a subdivision bounded by its namesake creek and the Norfolk Southern rail line. His 2-year-old granddaughter has named the passing trains after characters in the famed kids’ storybook series, “Thomas the Tank Engine.” She likes the trains, but she’s the only one in the household who does.
“It is loud,” Stefero said on a recent afternoon. He stood on his porch and listened for a muffled clank of steel on steel, the approach of a train. “It comes irregularly, too — I guess one an hour.”
About 20 trains pass along the track daily between the Norfolk Southern Intermodal loading terminal in Cobb County and downtown Atlanta, said Susan Terpay, a spokeswoman for the carrier. Like other train employees, she’s heard complaints about whistles, especially those that sound in the middle of the night.
“In some communities, people like to hear the sound,” she said. “In others, they don’t. But blowing the whistle is the most effective way to clear the track.”
It’s also the law.
Romance and racket
By the 20th century, nearly every state in the nation had laws requiring horns or whistles to warn travelers as trains approached crossings. But that apparently was not enough; in the early 1990s, officials in the Federal Railway Administration noted an increase in train-car crashes at some crossings in Florida. This was at the same time the Florida East Coast Railroad had a whistle ban in effect on all its trains.
In 1994, Congress ordered the FRA to require all trains to warn of their approach at any highway crossing. The FRA complied with a regulation that also provided communities the ability to establish “quiet zones” with special barriers.
Two structures qualify for a quiet zone: “quad gates,” or crossings with twice as many arms as the standard dual-arm barriers; or median dividers that make it nearly impossible to change lanes and illegally cross tracks when crossing arms are lowered.
The first is pricey: Quad gates can easily exceed $400,000. The second, median dividers, requires widening the roadway; some roads lack the right of way to expand. In addition, all quiet zones have to be a half-mile long.
Plenty of communities decide to live with the noise, said Key Phillips, railroad crossing manager for the state Department of Transportation. “After the cost is known, a lot of [municipalities] lose interest,” he said.
Noise is in the ear of the beholder, said Tucker resident Jeff Darter, who volunteers at the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth. The museum boasts an array of old engines, freight cars, cabooses and other train paraphernalia. Yes, it has whistles. “I still like to hear the train whistles,” said Darter, 71, who frequently traveled the rails during his career in the Air Force. “If you buy a house near railroad tracks, you should expect to hear whistles.”
A costly solution
The city of Decatur for several years pondered creating a quiet zone on a CSX track that runs along College and Howard avenues. After learning that building quad gates at three crossings would cost about $1 million, a train whistle didn’t sound so bad, City Manager Peggy Merriss said.
Residents also couldn’t agree on whether train whistles were an auditory pain. “About half the folks were for it [quiet zone], and half the folks were against it,” Merriss said. The city abandoned the proposal last year.
Acworth hasn’t given up its pursuit of a quiet zone. It’s a project the Acworth City Council is considering following Cobb voters’ recent approval to extend a county-wide sales tax. The zone, to be established at five CSX crossings in town, would cost more than $1 million. Mayor Tommy Allegood thinks the revamped crossings would serve residents well. “If I get one question more than any other question I’ve had in 10 years as mayor, it’s, ‘Hey, how do we get those trains to stop blowing their whistles?’ ” Allegood said.
That’s a question Marietta businessman James Eubanks has asked, too. A commercial property manager, Eubanks has an office about 30 feet from the CSX tracks one block from Marietta Square. His computer, he said, “does a little shimmy” every time a train passes.
The train whistles, he said, are a nuisance for residents and business interests alike. “From two or three miles away, it’s quaint,” he said. “If you ask merchants in downtown Marietta, it’s a no-brainer.”
In downtown Powder Springs, the sound of a train is something Richard McDonald has learned to accept. He lives on Marietta Street, in an old frame house that’s been his home since he was 15. He’s 65, and takes the trains in stride.
“Sometimes it bothers me, sometimes it don’t,” McDonald said. On his porch, a calico cat squinted in the sun. “You just learn to live with it.”
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