train noise and construction

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Has anyone noticed that the train noise around the Davis/Ball/Teele Square end of Somerville seems much more pronounced lately? It seems to be perhaps connected to the preparatory construction on the train tracks. Lately I can hear the trains passing by in neighborhoods I didn't think were that close to the tracks, and the sound seems louder at my house a few blocks away than it used to be. The construction work has been cutting trees down here and there to make room for widening the track, and I know they are blowing the horns more, presumably to alert workers along the tracks when a train is coming... but I'm still surprised by how much more I'm noticing it. Is it just me?

(edited parenthetical comments below; thanks for pointing out the real 'noise' tag, Ron.)

(sorry for the silly tag, I mean those grounded airplanes with the purple stripes on them that run out to West Medford on the Lowell Line, and it made *me* laugh, anyway.)

(And now that I've tagged this properly with a general "noise" tag, or I can also snark about the idiots who just set off firecrackers on their front porch across the street. Sigh.)

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

The other day at Lexington Park, I kept hearing what sounded like trains and was trying to figure out if that's what it was or just something else that sounded remarkably similar.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

I've been hearing train sounds while walking down Willow when I've gotten just about to Morrison or Lexington, including the train horns. I can't figure out what could have changed how the sound travels so dramatically...

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

There was a building taken down on Cedar by the bike path. I don't know if that could be doing it, or maybe one of the new buildings that'd gone up near there is causing the sound to echo and/or amplify.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Aha, I like the missing/echoing building theory. (Did you see the building on Cedar that went up in ~2 days with a crane and a bunch of trailer-sized pieces?)

[ron_newman]

No, where's this?

A couple of buildings have been demolished on Cedar lately -- the former Royal White laundry, and another a couple blocks south next to Faulkner Bros. Anyone know what's being built on these sites?

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

The building went up on one of those recently-demolished sites (I think it's not the royal white laundry one, but I can't quite picture which corner it's on off the top of my head.) It looks like housing.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

The prefabricated building that was trucked in went up in the former Royal White laundry mat/dry cleaner building site. There was another pre fab building that went in the former Curves space farther up Cedar closer to the 7-11. Same developer I believe.

[enhf94.livejournal.com]

No wonder that building went up so freakin' fast. It was _fast._

[ron_newman]

Ghost trains? Lexington Park is the former site of this station.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

For some reason I had thought that the stone building now at Powderhouse park had started out as the Highlands station. But I can't find any verification of that, and wikipedia claims it was built as a field house by the WPA in that location in the first place. And it doesn't look the same - two turreted towers vs. one with a conical roof.

[ron_newman]

What I've always been told is that the Highlands station was disassembled, then its stones used to build the Field House.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Ah. I hadn't realized that it was disassembled and rebuilt in a different shape!

[ron_newman]

The Historic Preservation folks (Brandon Wilson, Kristi Chase, and Dick Bauer) would have more information. Anything I've posted here is second-hand at best.

[totient]

Here's a cite for that.

[amy-s1.livejournal.com]

If you stand in the Lexington park playground facing the play structure in the same direction that this picture was taken, you can see the house behind this station in this picture has not changed, it's even seems to be painted in the same 2-tone colors. And the play structure is in the location of the old station and even made in the shape of an old train station.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=lexington+and+hancock+somerville+ma&ll=42.394321,-71.114126&spn=0.006157,0.009645&sll=42.394320,-71.114130&layer=c&cbp=13,194.89,,0,-0.35&cbll=42.394289,-71.113969&gl=us&hnear=Hancock+St+%26+Lexington+Ave,+Somerville,+Middlesex,+Massachusetts+02144&t=m&z=17&panoid=Q2Ue-vCB1_gbfI2Ng4jPWQ

[ron_newman]

We do have a noise tag.

[zubatac.livejournal.com]

Should I bother asking why ds_lj doesn't have a "signal" tag? :)

[kelkyag]

What would you like to tag as "signal"? (And how much snark do you want with your answer?)

[zubatac.livejournal.com]

<innocently> There is snark outside of davis_snark?

[cfox.livejournal.com]

I think there's a seasonal pattern to some types of noise complaint - air conditioners and fully leafed trees reduce the effect in summer, while storm windows and cold weather keep people from noticing in winter. The commuter train really made me jump more than usual at the intersection outside St. Clement's School this morning, but I don't see any real changes to the landscape that would affect it.

The wind pattern can carry noise a long way sometimes, but I don't have data as to whether that's hurting or helping.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

There are definitely some real changes, too, though. They seem to run the bells while the train is moving past live construction, not just when it is pulling into a station. (I have never in 20 years heard bells as the train is crossing the bridge or going under an underpass, when it's not at a station; now I do.) They were using air horns whenever a train approached when the construction was active. And the train horn sounds in new places (I presume also due to the construction.) It's the bits where I can hear the train in places I have never noticed it before that I'm curious how they came to be and if it is just that my seasonal changes are different.

Anyway, I certainly notice seasonal changes in the train sounds, and in our particular path to the train bridge near St. Clement's School they did remove vegetation a month or two ago as well.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

That wouldn't account for train noise being louder now at Lexington Park than it was a month or two ago, though.

I should get a train icon.