WAUSAU, WI (WSAU-WAOW) – Train tracks are right behind Jennifer Hagen’s house. Some of her nights lately have been filled with train sounds, causing a disruption for her family and others nearby.
“We’ve started noticing between 9:00 and midnight, we’ve getting a lot more horns, a lot more train activity,” Hagen told WAOW-TV.
She and others have been experiencing disruptions, despite posted signs nearby saying trains cannot sound their horns between 7pm and 7am. “We can hear it very clearly and they will sit right back here on the tracks and you just hear the engine dinging the entire time,” Hagen said.
The signs are posted per a Wausau ordinance dating back to 1989 that was grandfathered in to current federal regulations in 2005.
However, the sounding of the horns in that timeframe is not something the city can enforce. “Our ordinance is superseded by the federal law which says that the horns can be used during those times, and that ordinance is not enforceable by us as a local police department. It has to go through the Federal Railroad Administration,” said Lt. Luis Lopes-Serrao with the Wausau Police Department.
Watco, who runs the railroads, took over operations from Canadian National earlier this year. They note that federal law allows engineers to sound their horns during the so-called quiet time in emergency situations. “The train engineer only has one tool to let somebody know that a train is coming and that is the whistle,” said Ken Lucht, the assistant vice president of government affairs for Watco.
Engineers are also instructed to sound the horn at intersections with a lack of safety infrastructure. “In the existing quiet zones in Wausau, a majority of those crossings are passive, meaning there is no active warning device. There’s no flashing lights, no gates, and no bells,” Lucht said.
“If the city could just even put in the crossing arms to relinquish some of that noise at night, it’d be great. Especially since this is very residential through Wausau,” Hagen said.
