It is not just airports and planes it is trains too

Did you see all of the signs on the lawns in Barrington? Evidently they put a referendum on the ballot to tell CN they can't run trains through an upscale suburb.
 
mikea said:
Did you see all of the signs on the lawns in Barrington? Evidently they put a referendum on the ballot to tell CN they can't run trains through an upscale suburb.
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Yep I drove past them every day laughing my butt off at how that big time 'free market' town is trying to pass laws prohibiting a company to make money. Much more and we will end up in spin.
 
I've bought and sold a bunch of houses. I'm not a RE agent, but I work with them regularly. Invariably, when I contact an agent about purchase, they will start looking at stuff that is close to 'church, schools, shopping, gym, etc'. I have to wonder about the sensibility of anyone that would see this as a benefit, unless they were disabled, or didn't drive, and needed to be near one of these things regularly.

I usually have to tell them several times; 'I want to be as far away from everything as possible, and still within the district boundary that I am interested in'. Anyone who buys near a rail line, canal, shopping mall, theatre, or what have you deserves exactly what they paid for. That includes this ****at who doesn't like trains stopping on tracks the railroad owns, due to congestion further down the line.

His rights are: 1. live with it. 2. Sell it to someone else and move. 3. Raze the house and move.
 
mikea said:
Did you see all of the signs on the lawns in Barrington? Evidently they put a referendum on the ballot to tell CN they can't run trains through an upscale suburb.
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We are working on some track re-alignment and capacity modeling on this. It will be interesting to see how it plays out politically. The railroads pretty much have their way when it comes to this. A political hot potato of the last few years has been "whistle bans" past upscale urban settlemrnts. People build mega-expensive homes or condos near a rail corridor andthen realize, to their horror, that trains blow their horns at crossings, regardless of the time of day. Here in Atlanta, there is one such area that was successful in getting the railroad to prohibit whistling from late night till early AM. If the railroad doesn't blow for the crossing, and some schmo get whacked at the spot, guess who gets sued. Is it any wonder they aren't receptive to changing their operating practices? These same homeowners don't want to foot the bill for barriers and lights and those (noisy) bells at a crossing either.
 
Keith Lane said:
We are working on some track re-alignment and capacity modeling on this. It will be interesting to see how it plays out politically. The railroads pretty much have their way when it comes to this. A political hot potato of the last few years has been "whistle bans" past upscale urban settlemrnts. People build mega-expensive homes or condos near a rail corridor andthen realize, to their horror, that trains blow their horns at crossings, regardless of the time of day. Here in Atlanta, there is one such area that was successful in getting the railroad to prohibit whistling from late night till early AM. If the railroad doesn't blow for the crossing, and some schmo get whacked at the spot, guess who gets sued. Is it any wonder they aren't receptive to changing their operating practices? These same homeowners don't want to foot the bill for barriers and lights and those (noisy) bells at a crossing either.
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We got the whistle exemption for some crossings in the area, but not, as it turns out, for the nearby one that woke me up the first night I slept in the house. All of the crossings have lights and gates but of course that doesn't stop people from getting hit by trains. I expect that the horns don't do much either at chasing off the idjits, but when I'm driving around I like the idea that the horn backs up if the gates don't work.

It's funny that I don't notice the train as much now. I think the noise varies with the season where the foliage and the hardness of the ground has an effect. I grew up living practically under a CTA L station so I know you can used to anything.
 
In the article cited, the homeowner complains about the noise of an idling locomotive. To the uninitiated, this might seem like a trivial complaint. The real issue I'd have with an idling loco nearby is not the engine noise, but the air compressor onboard that has to keep cycling on and off randomly all the time in order to keep the train's brake line charged. (this is often the reason to leave it idling in the first place) These are pretty loud, and the compressor clutch kicking in is noisy and raises the idle as well. On some locomotives the air system constantly "spits" out moisture, making a continuous racket. (Ice from that moisture in the train line is a bad thing.) Additionally, some crews leave the loco's comm radio turned up obscenely loud. That right there should be a death penalty crime.
 
I dunno, I think the guy has a pretty legitimate beef: If you buy a house near railroad tracks, you have to expect them to come cruising through, making several minutes worth of noise. And the owner said he's fine with that. But engines sitting there idling? For days at a time? That's not something one should reasonably expect. So I don't think it's too easy to cry foul about the owner being whiny or something there.

What to do about it? Heck if I know.
 
ReverendSlappy said:
I dunno, I think the guy has a pretty legitimate beef: If you buy a house near railroad tracks, you have to expect them to come cruising through, making several minutes worth of noise. And the owner said he's fine with that. But engines sitting there idling? For days at a time? That's not something one should reasonably expect. So I don't think it's too easy to cry foul about the owner being whiny or something there.

What to do about it? Heck if I know.
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IMHO if you are next to tracks, especially ones with spurs or parking track one would expect that at sometime the railroad would want to use their tracks for commerce.
 
smigaldi said:
IMHO if you are next to tracks, especially ones with spurs or parking track one would expect that at sometime the railroad would want to use their tracks for commerce.
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No, I hear ya... I'm just saying that in this guy's case, I think it's pretty legitimate for him to say that he didn't expect this particular issue. The fact that it's a recent phenomenon adds to that feeling in my book. :dunno:

Put it this way: I wouldn't feel the least bit bad for him if he was just complaining about the noise of trains going by. The idling? Yeah, I can see that sucking pretty bad.
 
ReverendSlappy said:
No, I hear ya... I'm just saying that in this guy's case, I think it's pretty legitimate for him to say that he didn't expect this particular issue. The fact that it's a recent phenomenon adds to that feeling in my book. :dunno:

Put it this way: I wouldn't feel the least bit bad for him if he was just complaining about the noise of trains going by. The idling? Yeah, I can see that sucking pretty bad.
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The line he bought next to have parking lots for trains. I think he was just fooling himself that the railroad would never use them. Where he is at there are 6 tracks, 2 of which go into downtown and the other four are just for parking off to the side (whatever the railroad term for that is) until they can get into downtown. There is a similar arrangement up the tracks from Cary in Crystal on the NW line.
 
smigaldi said:
The line he bought next to have parking lots for trains. I think he was just fooling himself that the railroad would never use them. Where he is at there are 6 tracks, 2 of which go into downtown and the other four are just for parking off to the side (whatever the railroad term for that is) until they can get into downtown. There is a similar arrangement up the tracks from Cary in Crystal on the NW line.
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I don't think he was thinking they'd "never use them" so much as he was thinking that when they did use them, they wouldn't park running engines there for days at a time. Know what I mean? I dunno, unlike the airport and other NIMBYs, I kinda feel bad for this guy; that's not something I would have anticipated either. I mean at the very least, I'd have thought they'd shut them down after a while... Guess not. :dunno:
 
When we bought our house in Bolivar, we knew it was within a block of the local grain elevator/feed supply; we fully expected noise, not a problem. Since then, around the corner in a zoned residential district a family moved in, graded a large driveway, parked three 18-wheeler trailers and one tractor, and often on weekends will park the fourth 18-wheeler refrigeration rig just off the street. The reefer compresser is either running continuously or is cycling on a regular basis. It's a diesel-based refrigeration unit, and is easily heard throughout the house. We won a P/Z commission battle to change his adjoining lot to industrial; however, he still has the trailers and stuff parked on his residential lot (on which he and his family live).

Of course, we have had some other "industries" on our block before--mostly living better through "chemistry". Fortunately, the cops put the kibosh on that. Most of the properties are owned by a "____"lord who isn't interested in improving his properties--just getting high credit risk folks to rent what are very run-down shacks/trailers/modulars.

Oh, well. At least it's paid for, so I can (barely) afford to fly.
 
ReverendSlappy said:
I don't think he was thinking they'd "never use them" so much as he was thinking that when they did use them, they wouldn't park running engines there for days at a time. Know what I mean? I dunno, unlike the airport and other NIMBYs, I kinda feel bad for this guy; that's not something I would have anticipated either. I mean at the very least, I'd have thought they'd shut them down after a while... Guess not. :dunno:
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I dunno he bought a house on the BNL commuter/freight line. A main arterial into Chicago. I think he was deluding his self to think it would be 'lite' traffic.
 
smigaldi said:
I dunno he bought a house on the BNL commuter/freight line. A main arterial into Chicago. I think he was deluding his self to think it would be 'lite' traffic.
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Yeah, true... But It's not the frequency of the traffic that seems to be the problem. It's trains just sitting there, running for days at a time. That's not a phenomenon I'd expect. Hours? Maybe... Days? Not so much. :dunno:
 
ReverendSlappy said:
Yeah, true... But It's not the frequency of the traffic that seems to be the problem. It's trains just sitting there, running for days at a time. That's not a phenomenon I'd expect. Hours? Maybe... Days? Not so much. :dunno:
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Seems to me like the people who say 'I know the airport was there but I did not expect the planes to land day and night.'
 
smigaldi said:
Seems to me like the people who say 'I know the airport was there but I did not expect the planes to land day and night.'
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I'm more with RevSlappy on this. It's more like someone who says "I knew there was an airport there, but I didn't expect them to be hovering helicopters in shifts just outside my property." Something that's certainly possible, but not what the typical person might expect.
 
Kent, in some urban areas they require diesel trucks to shut down if idling more than 5 minutes. Aside from the pump-up time for the brakes (which I assume would be longer for a train than a truck), what would the issue be if trains were required to shut down to avoid prolonged idling?

-Skip
 
gprellwitz said:
I'm more with RevSlappy on this. It's more like someone who says "I knew there was an airport there, but I didn't expect them to be hovering helicopters in shifts just outside my property." Something that's certainly possible, but not what the typical person might expect.
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Yeah, that's kinda what I'm saying. It's the incessant nature of it that I think it's legitimate to be surprised by and annoyed with.
 
Skip Miller said:
Kent, in some urban areas they require diesel trucks to shut down if idling more than 5 minutes.
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Actually, it's mostly entire STATES. NJ, NY, and many others in the northeast plus CA are 5-minute-idle states. MA is THREE minutes. The worst part is in NYC though - They write drivers tickets for idling even if the temperature outside is below freezing. What the hell are they supposed to do? :mad:

Aside from the pump-up time for the brakes (which I assume would be longer for a train than a truck), what would the issue be if trains were required to shut down to avoid prolonged idling?
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Well, I don't know jack about trains, but a truck can pump up sufficiently in just a couple of minutes.

On a truck, there are two ways of applying the brakes:

1) When there's a lack of air, IE the parking brakes are on (or the truck simply lost all of its air and can't replenish it - rare emergency!), there are springs in some of the brake chambers (most commonly the front drive axle on the tractor, and both axles on the trailer) that will apply the brakes. When the red "emergency" line is supplied with air, that releases the spring brakes.

2) The "normal" braking, which is when the brake pedal is pressed or the "Johnson bar" is pulled (for trailer brakes only), which pressurizes the blue "service" line. In this case, the air is used to apply the brakes, not release them as with the spring brakes. This also puts the brakes on ALL wheels.

On trains, there is only one black brake line, so I'm sure they work differently. Keith?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
On trains, there is only one black brake line, so I'm sure they work differently. Keith?
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I had assumed that lack of air pressure closed train brakes. Is that correct?

Even if the engine needed to run to keep pressure in the line it would seem that some sort of aux system could be cheaper to run than the big engine.
 
Skip Miller said:
Kent, in some urban areas they require diesel trucks to shut down if idling more than 5 minutes.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's mostly entire STATES. NJ, NY, and many others in the northeast plus CA are 5-minute-idle states. MA is THREE minutes. The worst part is in NYC though - They write drivers tickets for idling even if the temperature outside is below freezing. What the hell are they supposed to do? :mad:

Aside from the pump-up time for the brakes (which I assume would be longer for a train than a truck), what would the issue be if trains were required to shut down to avoid prolonged idling?
Click to expand...

Well, I don't know jack about trains, but a truck can pump up sufficiently in just a couple of minutes.

On a truck, there are two ways of applying the brakes:

1) When there's a lack of air, IE the parking brakes are on (or the truck simply lost all of its air and can't replenish it - rare emergency!), there are springs in some of the brake chambers (most commonly the front drive axle on the tractor, and both axles on the trailer) that will apply the brakes. When the red "emergency" line is supplied with air, that releases the spring brakes.

2) The "normal" braking, which is when the brake pedal is pressed or the "Johnson bar" is pulled (for trailer brakes only), which pressurizes the blue "service" line. In this case, the air is used to apply the brakes, not release them as with the spring brakes. This also puts the brakes on ALL wheels.

On trains, there is only one black brake line, so I'm sure they work differently. Keith?
 
I have invited a friend of mine that a few of you have met that is a train engineer for a major raild road to answer the brake / idle questions. We'll see if he does.

Edit: Just talked to him--he is stuck in a motel somewhere without internet. He said something about federal law stating that if the train shuts down without air for more than 4 hours it must undergo an air-inspection which takes quite a bit of time. There are also electronics that draw power even if the locomotive is shutdown so the batteries need to be kept charged. There are some newer locomotives with an auto-start that will startup and shutdown as required. I've probably misquoted him I'm sure he'll post something better when he gets home.
 
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Dang train engineers... just as bad as pilots!

So, why did the idiot buy a house ONE HUNDRED FEET from a rail line??? :rolleyes:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
On trains, there is only one black brake line, so I'm sure they work differently. Keith?
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Well, I finally got a few minutes to reply.....

On a long train, say 130+ cars it can take up to an hour or more to fully charge the "train line", the black hose that runs from car to car.
The train's brakes are the invention of Mr. Westinghouse and haven't changed drastically in a hundred years.
Each car has two air tanks, a service and an emergency reservoir.
All cars' brake reservoirs are connected to the train line via a three way valve. Let's say you put together a train in the yard and it has no air on it at all.
It has no brakes at all either except the hand brakes that must be applied individually by a person turning a wheel.
All the cars' hoses are connected and the train line hooked to the locomotive.
The compressor on the loco begins to "charge the line", it has to fill all those reservoirs to 90 psi. There are usually quite a few leaks to overcome as well. The cars are in many various states of repair, being leased by god knows who. Once the entire train is charged to 90psi, the brakes are still released, but ready for use. Now the train line acts as not only the supply, but as the application device as well. The brake lever in the cab actualy lets air out of the line via a valve and reduces the train line pressure. The three way valve on each car recognizes the reduction, and releases some of the air in it's service reservoir into a actuating cylinder which, through a series of mechanical levers applies pressure to the brake arm attached to the shoes and the shoes to the tread of the wheel. The more you lower the pressure on the train line, the harder the brakes are applied. To release the brakes, close the brake valve in the cab and the train line pressure begins to build again. The three way valve senses the rising pressure and dumps the pressure out of the actuating cylinder and starts to re-charge the reservoirs as well. The application of the brakes is progressive from the front to the rear of the train as the pressure lowers, and releases the same as the pressure rises. There are a couple of manufacturers that have started using Electronic Control Pneumatic (ECP) brakes. These have a shall electrical connection between the cars that triggers all the car's brakes to come on and release simultaneously. The effect on an empty train's stopping dostance can be as much as 40% shorter. Like magnetos on a plane, they have to work in the event of an electrical fault just like the normal brakes do. The loco has an independent brake, a hand brake to park the loco and dynamic brakes which turn the traction motors into big generators across which huge resistor grids are shorted in varying degrees to make electric brakes out of them.
When a train is parked and the engine shut off, the train line will leak down in a few hours, leaving the thing capable of rolling away. There are rules rtegarding how many hand brakes need to be set for any gven train on any given grade. It's a real PITA to let a train leak down and recharge it also because there are federally mandates pre-trip tests that have to be performed if the train line go to 0 psi.
This is a pretty simplified version, but you get the idea.

For all you ever wanted to know, see the attached Word document.
It's the best document Iv'e seen on the subject.
 

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