(The Santa Cruz Sentinel posted the following story by Dan White on its website on October 10.)
LIVE OAK, Calif. — A group of 40 condo residents say Union Pacific Railroad freight trains are rumbling past their homes at ungodly hours, blowing their horns and driving them batty.
And they say their efforts to improve the situation have gone ignored.
The group from Pinescape, a 30th Avenue complex with some units just a few feet from the tracks, said the train schedule seems to have changed in the past three months. .
They say the train, its air horn blaring, has woken them at 1, 3, and 4 in the morning on several occasions.
“There’s nothing you can do,” said Eric Cho of Pinescape, who works at home in pharmaceutical sales, and whose wife gets up at 5 a.m for her teaching job over the hill. “You hear the ‘rrrrrrr” sound, and you sense the vibration, that thump-thump-thump and the rattling between cars.”
It’s unclear why there have been late-night and early-morning freight runs.
A Union Pacific spokesman, based in Omaha, Neb., said he was unaware of scheduling changes on the spur line, though he added he did not have detailed information about the line and its operations.
The RMC Pacific Materials plant in Davenport is the railroad’s main customer in this area. Trains haul coal in to power the plant, and haul out cement. RMC has not reported any recent schedule changes.
“We have no late shipments nor do we receive any early (morning) deliveries,” said Ken Kennegard of RMC, which runs the cement plant in Davenport. “We continue to receive deliveries between 1 and 4 (p.m.)”
County Supervisor Jan Beautz, whose district covers Mid-County, said she’s fielded several calls in the past few months — she wasn’t sure if they were all from Pinescape — and relayed them to Union Pacific.
“I’ve never been really successful at getting them to respond to any of the questions, … but we will try to see why they are running fright trains in the middle of the night when there’s very little freight, and they are only going up to Davenport for the cement.”
The spur branches off a coastal line running from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Mark Davis of Union Pacific Railroad said he was unaware of complaints from either the Live Oak residents or Supervisor Beautz.
He said the train is required by law to sound its air horn at all intersections for safety reasons.
But he said the corporate office would call up the local UP operators to see if something could be worked out with the schedule.
“We’ll look at if it’s possible to still serve the customer and serve (resident) needs if scheduling can be changed. Sometimes it can, sometimes it can’t.
Though he was unaware of delivery schedule changes along the spur, he added that “when the economy improves, they may need more railcars at different times.”
Lawrence Stern of the Pinescape Homeowners Association said he’s ready for some results because he first complained in July and has seen no difference.
“If there was a reasonable reason they had to run the train late at night, if they are evacuating an injured railroad worker, I wouldn’t mind being awakened in the middle of the night,” Stern said.
The retired Los Angeles County teacher acknowledged he bought a condo knowing full well it was only a few feet from a railroad line. But he said it was common knowledge that the train only ran a few times a week and always during reasonable hours.
Davis recommended that people with complaints and others concerned about railroad noise call (402) 271-3272.