Bud Light’s Real Men of Genius is still the funniest advertising on radio, IMHO. This week I started hearing “Mr. Apartment Right Next to the L Tracks Guy”. Pure gold.
Announcer:You asked your broker for a place close to public transportation. How’s three feet sound? Singer: Sounds kinda noisy! Announcer: It’s got everything: one bedroom, one bath, and one hundred-fifty tons of screeching steel passing by your window every six minutes. Singer: giverortakeaminute!
I’m paraphrasing here because, sadly, I can not find this clip online. Oh well, take my word for it - it’s hilarious.
Those of you who have ridden the L in Chicago know exactly which apartments they’re talking about. There’s a whole slew of them. Three feet is about right.
So Dopers, who here gets the “Mr. Apartment Right Next to the L Tracks Guy” award? For this purpose, we’ll count any train tracks, as long as they are active tracks. Commuter, freight, it doesn’t matter. Just as long as they are above ground and are used at least weekly.
Using Google Earth’s measuring tool, I can see that I once lived in an apartment on Lunt Ave that was 281 feet from the L tracks. Can anyone top that?
I grew up on Railway Street, so named because it was bounded at both ends by railway tracks. I see where from my front door to the tracks it was 211 feet.
There are train tracks right behind my house, perhaps 30 or 40 feet from the back fence. but they aren’t nearly as busy as they used to be. Several freight trains go by each day, but its really not as bad as you might think. I barely notice it at all.
My childhood home was about 0.3 mile from the West End MARTA station (you can still see the house when the train pulls into the station). Railroad tracks ran alongside the MARTA rails, and you could hear the whistle of the railroad train late at night.
To this day, when I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed, I swear I can still hear that whistle. But there aren’t any train tracks around for miles and miles.
Our property backs onto the MARC (Maryland Rail Commuter) tracks, which also get some (but not overmuch) use for freight trains. From our back door, according to Google Earth, it measures approximately 200 feet away. But in those 200 feet are a line of bushy pine trees and an eight foot fence. So the sound is very dampened.
I was worried about it when we were house hunting, and I saw this one was so close to tracks, but it wasn’t bad when we were doing our walkthrough and a train passed by. Since then, we hardly even notice any more. It helps that this area of track is pretty much equidistant between two stations, and on a long straight stretch of track. So the trains are humming along by the time they reach us, whether they go north or south.
I now live 0.97 mi (per Google) from an active freight line which sees a dozen or so trains per day. I can usually hear the train whistle at a grade crossing & when it’s quiet I can also make out the engine noise and/or the cars rumbling. They’re gonna replace the grade crossing next year with an overpass; I’m gonna miss the whistle.
I used to live 0.37 miles from the S. Louis “MetroLink” light rail. When it was quiet I could just barely hear the crossing gate bells & the train whistle & rumble/wind noise. They ran about every 10 minutes 18 hours a day.
I’ve never lived close enough to train tracks to consider the sound anything but an occasional audio treat; certainly not a nuisance. Living 30 feet away would be a different matter though.
My house in Chicago was next to the Brown Line El; the tracks ran between the alley and my garage. I would estimate that it was about 30-35 feet from the tracks to the back wall of the house. The Master bedroom was at the front of the house, and when we were considering buying it one of the things we did was check out how well we could hear the trains from there, particularly since at the time my wife occasionally suffered from migraines.
During peak times trains went by every 5-8 minutes. After a while we hardly noticed it when we were inside. Conversations in the back yard, however, were subject to what my neighbor an I referred to as the “Eastwood pause” (the street we lived on was Eastwood Avenue).
I’m with HeyHomie: about 100 feet depending on how you measure. I would stand at the window as three-year-old and shout TWAIN! TWAIN! whenever one would go by, just so my parents would know that it was there.
I’m getting ready to buy a rowhouse that is being built at the northwestern-most empty lot in this map. The distance is under 50 feet… but the trains are museum pieces and are never moved, so it fails to entirely satisfy the spirit of the OP’s question . My wife is expecting our first child, so I’m looking forward to our kid being able to scream TWAIN! whenever he/she looks out the window of the new house.
I grew up less than 300 ft from a combined commuter/freight line and now find that one of the factors that I like in my current home is that I can still hear trains, even though they are not as close.
If you aren’t lulled to sleep by that sound, may I suggest you avoid this hotel in Flagstaff.
I’m going to estimate it at 3 tenths of a mile. Too lazy to come up with a closer approximation. Either it’s not a particularly frequently used train track or the normal noises of living (especially in an apartment) cover it up. But it is used at least weekly, and on three separate occasions that I can think of off hand I’ve had to wait for a freight train to finish crossing. (Less than half the time I leave my apartment do I drive in the direction which takes me across the tracks. And even less often on my return.
Now ask me how close I’ve lived to an airport. (Much further away, in fact, but the funny part is that we didn’t realize how close (5 miles or so, less as the crow flies) the apartment building was to the airport until I’d almost completely moved in to the building. Not infrequently, but not constantly or anything, I’d hear a plane overhead. And like the traintracks here, it was loud enough to be noticiable/distracting, but not really loud enough to be annoying).
My old apartment was just 50 feet from the tracks, according to Google Maps. Never really got that loud though. Guess they just know how to make trains here.
My current place overlooks a freight yard, about 100 feet from the end of the tracks. Again, not that loud except when they accidentally drop one of the containers.
Fortunately, I live about 15 miles from the nearest trains. However one of the places I worked was about 15 feet from the train tracks. (the other half of the building was a cafe/train museum!) It didn’t bother the adults, but a couple of the kids were terrified every time the train zoomed by. Others ran to the window to watch every. single. time.
Less than 100’ from my bedroom window. It’s a commuter line with maybe 2 trains an hour - but at night, long fast freights run through. I sleep right through it; I grew up 4 blocks from the Chicago & North Western.
Well, I’ve lived pretty directly on top of a train line. Not really an issue though, since it was the East London tube line. Late at night you could feel a slight vibration and hear a rumble, if everything else was quiet. However, the noisy pack of fucks in the flat below usually drowned out the noise :mad:
I lived in one of those, on the second floor so as to make the trains as close as possible.
I woke up every morning dreaming of dragons, when the rush hour schedule would start and the trains would run every 5 minutes. I loved moving out of that place, and made it a point to never live that close to the train again.
. My wife is expecting our first child, so I’m looking forward to our kid being able to scream TWAIN! whenever he/she looks out the window of the new house.