Train Noise
By June 25, 2005, John Marquart and the city council had failed to grandfather
the city's train-horn Quiet Zones. Four trains per day began to sound their
horns throughout the city as of that date, four soundings at each of 13 rail
crossings in the city, not including the back-and-forth of coupling and
decoupling, north and south, east and west, all tracks and rail companies, day
and/or night. As of summer 2006, the city manager and city council have still
not re-established the Quiet Zones and the trains' horns continue to blare
around the clock, both startling, angering, and creating grief and havoc among
babies and other children, adults of all ages, pets, workers, sleepers,
motel/hotel patrons, craftsmen, hobbyists, readers, speakers, persons
recording sound, performers, artists (painters), persons having business and
personal conversations on the phone, music-listeners and TV-watchers, golfers
and other sportsmen, PTSD patients, other sick and disabled, and many other
residents of and visitors to Iron Mountain -- in other words, nearly everyone
who lives, works, or visits within several blocks of the tracks.
Other sources of information:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
EDITOR, On behalf of my family, neighbors, friends, overnight guests, and other
visitors, I’m using this opportunity to publicly recognize Gary Siminson and
Canadian National Railway (CN), as well as Mark Pontti and Verso Paper for their
help, for voluntarily quieting CN’s train-horn usage in and around the
neighborhoods on the east-west tracks in and out of Iron Mountain.
Still within the bounds of safety and the law, they’ve done a terrific job
coming up with a sane and common sense alternative to indiscriminate horn usage
at city crossings, and now resort to horn-blowing only during the day and only
when it’s a must, which has been very rarely in recent weeks.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that this new quietness is a definite and
sizeable uptick in our neighborhood’s standard of living and quality of life.
We appreciate the sensitivity, sensibility, and consideration of these
individuals and their companies. This is a example of how businesses can
effectively create goodwill, good feeling, and harmony within a community.
I applaud them.
Simply by doing the right thing, it’s great public relations for them; for us,
it’s sanity, safety, reduced tension, sleep, the ability to hear other sound,
better health, and all of the far-reaching things that those items affect and
improve.
Because the city government has been alternately unresponsive and ineffective
dealing with this issue since we first approached the city manager, mayor, and
then-council October 15, 2004, and since the horns first started blowing June
25, 2005, I encourage the citizens of Iron Mountain who live along or near the
city’s north-south tracks to contact and actively pursue a similar arrangement,
if possible, with the Escanaba & Lake Superior Railroad Company (E&LS) and the
companies with which it does business.
It may be the way, in at least this one instance, to start to again raise the
standard of living and again improve the quality of life along the length of
track in your neighborhood.
The place to start is E&LSRR General Office, One Larkin Plaza, PO Box 217,
Wells, MI 49894. Phone: 906-786-0693. Fax: 906-786-8012. E-mail:
elswells@up.net.
Marketing/Customer Service: 920-435-8006,
tomklimek@gbonline.com.
Let them know what you think and how you feel, then ask if there’s anything the
rail company and its customers themselves can do to ease the problem, at least
until Iron Mountain’s city management and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)
can get on the same page and re-establish the city’s longstanding quiet zone.
Jim Hogan
Iron Mountain
From The
Daily News, October 16, 2006.
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