My house is about 200 yards from a set of railroad tracks, which runs maybe 4 or 5 trains a day, including some that run overnight. When I first moved in, I could hear the trains, but after about a week, you don't even notice them. I find it difficult to believe that these people are being kept up by the trains running by.
As much as I hate to admit it, I even got used to hearing the boom base speakers that make the whole house shake at 2 in the morning. Probably what happened to them is they are having PTSD. Not knowing about the train horns to begin with started the problem. If you know what it is, the adrenalin doesn’t kick in. Just a thought.
But, they’re victims; can’t you understand that?
And I stopped noticing them pretty quickly too.
Fortunately, they were electric. Occasionally, a diesel electric would rumble by, and that would draw attention.
One woman I knew lived about as close as you could to the tracks, as in, her backyard abutted them, and during a RR strike, she said she and her husband would wake up in middle of the night because the trains weren't going by.
I used to live about 2 blocks from the train tracks. Like you after the first week I didn’t hear them. Mine was mostly commuter rail but every night around midnight we’d have a huge freight come through.
My parents live out in the country where it is extremely quiet. I’d go to visit for Christmas for a week or 2 and it would take me 3 or 4 nights to adjust to the ‘spooky’ silence.
I live about a half mile south of a track. A few months ago I woke up because the house was shaking. I thought we were having an earthquake, but it lasted for over a minute. I realized it was a train passing. I can’t imagine how long and heavy that train must have been to wake me up by shaking the house.
My ex sister-in-law lives 50 feet from a set of tracks.
You don’t get used to it.
Where I grew up in Ronceverte, WV, our house was on the mountain above the Greenbrier River and the railroad. We had no air conditioning so everyone slept with their windows open and screens to keep the bugs out at night. I can still remember lying in bed and hearing the coal trains coming down the valley in the distance. My great-grandfather was an engineer with the railroad and would walk down the mountain and hop aboard.