If you live near the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) tracks and you’ve been hearing train horns in your sleep during the past month or so, you’re not dreaming.
Despite the fact that the BNSF has established a quiet zone along much of the route that travels between Aurora and the Halsted Street station in Chicago, all trains – commuter and freight – have been blowing their horns near grade crossings or whenever there are pedestrians or motorists nearby, night and day.
“In what seems like the last month or so, the frequency of train horns blowing has dramatically increased in Riverside,” said Riverside resident Paul Kucera, who lives south of the tracks about a half mile from the Longcommon crossing.
“And when they blow, it’s not just one or two warning toots. … In at least one case, it sounded as if two trains were doing dueling horn blows.”
There’s reason for all the horn blowing, according to Steve Forsberg, general director of public affairs for the BNSF.
“There’s a major track project underway,” Forsberg said.
According to Forsberg, while the railroad does some track maintenance every year, every few years they embark on a significant project. And that is what’s happening on the line of triple tracks heading from Chicago to Aurora. All along the line, the railroad is changing out some 60,000 wood ties between the rails of two of the three sets of tracks.
“It’s a combination of two things that’s causing the horn blowing,” Forsberg said.
First, whenever there are railroad work crews within 25 feet of the tracks, trains must sound warning horns.
That takes care of the daytime horns, but what about in the middle of the night when no work is being done? In order to accommodate the equipment needed to do the work, the railroad has had to remove fencing between tracks. Removing that barrier creates an additional safety hazard that train engineers have to take into consideration.
“The fence is a barrier to keep pedestrian trespassers away,” Forsberg said.
When the fence is down, the train engineer will blow the horn anytime a pedestrian is within 25 feet of the tracks or if in the engineer’s judgment the horn needs to be sounded.
Added to that is the fact that, according to Forsberg, the three-track line that cuts through Brookfield and Riverside is the busiest single route in the railroad’s network. A total of 150 trains traverse those tracks daily, said Forsberg. Metra and Amtrak trains account for 110 of that number, with the rest freight trains.
“I’d be hard-pressed to name a busier route in the nation,” Forsberg said.
The good news, said Forsberg, is that the quiet zones will be honored once the work is complete. That ought to be by the end of the month.
“The work started in Naperville in late July and will end in the Halsted area in late September,” Forsberg said.
Work crews will be in Brookfield from Sept. 14 to 16 and in Riverside from Sept. 15 to 17 replacing railroad ties on one of the three tracks.
“Once the work is done, the fences will go back up and things will go back to the way they should be,” Forsberg said.