I was hitchhiking in Maine with a friend once. We needed a pace to sleep when it got dark, so we walked away from the road into a field and found a flat spot next to a mound. We woke up in the middle of a night as a train went past less than 10 feet way. The “mound” was the rail bed. It sacred the sh*t out of us. It wasn’t all bad, however. When we woke up in the morning we found out that the field was full of low-bush blueberries, so we had them with our oatmeal.
My parents used to have a condo right here. Commuter rail tracks on 2 sides of the building, each one running trains every 5 minutes during rush hours. I lived there for half a year or so, and the bedroom was about 60 ft from the nearest track. The noise never bothered me. It probably helped that we were so close to a major station, so train speed was very low.
The freight train rumble and the whistle is a treat. I once lived next door to a dog that howled and moaned whenever he heard the whistle. First time I heard him, it scared the bejesus out of me. What the hell is that? I was sure someone was being murdered.
I spent a year and a half in an end-unit rowhome in Baltimore’s Charles Village. The train tracks (even louder for running through a giant culvert thing) were about 10’ from the end wall of the unit.
We grew surprisingly used to it.
Wow. I thought LurkMeister was our winner until this post. Of course, I also thought that my distance of 281’ would last longer than 4 minutes thankyouverymuch, fishbicycle. 
So, for you folks who lived ridiculously close, did the whole joint shake every time a train went by? Were the walls cracking or what?
I was wondering how long it would be until someone like 2nd law checked in and beat me. In the nearly 20 years I lived in the house it never felt like the house was shaking, or noticed any sign of structural damage that I could blame on the proximity of passing trains. I did notice that I had to periodically tighten the setscrews on my doorknobs, however. 
In the summer there was the question of leaving the windows open for ventilation, which increased the noise level in the house. What was actually more annoying than passing trains, however, was that for the last year or so before I moved out the CTA was renovating the stations on the Brown Line, and the trains kept stopping behind my house (which was almost exactly between two stations) because of repair delays, and the announcement explaining/apologizing for the delay was loud enough to hear inside the house.
120 feet right now. Lived here for 2 years and get to hear the freight trains every day. And my apartment is about the farthest from them, the closest ones get to about 20 feet from the tracks.
I’ve lived close to trains my whole life. This house is about a five-minute drive from a Long Island Railroad station, which is close enough to hear them go past. In Illinois, I had an apartment a few hundred feet from an El stop. [Mapquest says it’s 1161 feet by car, but when you ducked out the back entrance and walked I doubt it was half that.] It wasn’t quite the Blues Brothers, but it was close. 
Sorry about shattering your record so soon!
After awhile, you don’t notice the trains, unless a visitor points one out. Well, there is one exception to that. When it’s a summer night, 100 degrees in your room, with no air conditioning or breeze. The trains would go, excruciatingly slowly, up a few thousand yards to change tracks, then screech to a stop. Then they’d rev up and go into reverse, and push a line of cars down the tracks to smash into another set of cars. Screech to a stop again. Rev up. Go forward. Repeat the scenario. From about 2 AM until 5:30 AM. That’s when you’d notice the trains.
No, what rattled our walls and shook our cabinet contents were the underground explosions at the limestone quarries and gypsum mines just outside town.
I lived within about 200 feet of a multiple train tracks at one time. There was a nearby airport too. It was hard to sleep sometimes. They fixed the airconditioning the month I moved out one year later. There were two retarded women and one man that ran around all night from room to room having rampent sex. The landlady finally got the guy kicked out that was not on the lease and the all night running and sex stopped. They also piled garbage all over and infested the other appartments with bugs and mice. One year after I left the area was having armed robberies. I lived 50 feet from a gas station they started to rob regularly. I was never happier to leave a place than that place. About 8 blocks away was a meat processing plant that filled the air with the smell of burning pig and cattle.
My place is probably about 200m from the rail line. However the trains run through a cutting, so I rarely get any noise.
I grew up in a house about 50 feet from a freight rail. The trains only came through about two or three times a day, but right in front of our house is where the engineer would blow the whistle. Long Long Short Long. There was another crossing about half a mile from the house, so when my sister and I would hear the train coming in the afternoon, we would run out to the tracks to wave. The engineer would always throw us candy, and sometimes a Little Debbie from his lunch.
The tracks have been decommissioned now, and I miss the sound of the train rumbling by in the night. I was always afraid of tornadoes because everybody on the news said they sounded like a freight train coming through the middle of the house. How was I gonna know the difference???
For about 16 years, I lived maybe a quarter of a mile from the tracks. Would only hear it if the back windows were open, and even then, it was a sort of faint, lonesome sound, almost soothing. The guys who had it running directly behind their back yards may have had a different opinion though.
When I lived in Japan for a short time the dormitory I stayed in was pretty close to the train tracks. Probably about a 15 second walk away from the front door. When I got up every morning, I’d look out the window on my way to the bathroom and see a train going by, and think “woohoo! I’m in Japan!” The noise of the trains didn’t bother me at all, I guess the dorms were pretty well insulted. On the other hand, the noise of the railroad crossing gates could be deeply obnoxious. They would start beeping right before the train arrived and the gates started going down, in order to let you know to hustle your butt across the tracks. (Even though trains aren’t that long, you would sometimes be waiting for-frickin’-ever because like 5 different trains arrive at the same time). It was a remarkably penetrating sound. Luckily I sleep through everything since the trains start running at 5 AM.
I felt much worse for some of the other people there. I remember one house I would walk by every morning. It was this lovely traditional-style Japanese house with sliding doors and all. It had a beautiful little garden and a lovely wooden fence. It was also located RIGHT NEXT to the train tracks, AND to a crossing. The inhabitants probably didn’t even notice it anymore, but damn. I always used to wonder if that house pre-dated the train tracks.
I just looked at googlemaps, and I guess it was actually all of 12 feet. Being at the same height as the train wheels was just a bonus.
It was the first year of law school for me, and I moved into this place, actually at the time was an industrial building, with a buddy of mine who was a professional photographer using it as live/work space. At one time the building was the headquarters for Bell and Howell, and our space included an executive office with a shower and what had been the company lounge, which had a wet bar.
The building would shake some when the trains went by, and I made a point of not hanging any pictures on the wall because of it. No cracks in the plaster or anything though, the place was solidly built.
I’m pretty sure it’s been converted to condos now, but you couldn’t give me one of them (if I had to live in it).
Dave
When I was born, our garden backed onto a suburban line, maybe 100 feet away. My dad used to go to work by going out the back garden gate and along to a halt just along the track for the train… that line’s been a footpath for years now.
Much more recently, my girlfriend’s flat was also within about 80 feet of a mainline cutting, but she lived at the back of the building and it didn’t bother us - we’d hear an occasional rumble if the tv/hifi/radio wasn’t on.
I lived in this dorm for a year in college (the one casting the long shadow). From the scale at the bottom it appears to be about 20 feet from the railroad tracks to the northwest. I was 8 floors up, so I don’t know if that counts as being close or not.
I currently live about 100’ from a freight line. Our first night in the house, at about 3am, the train barrelled down the tracks. My partner and I, pets included, had collective heart attacks at the ruckus. Now we don’t even notice it.
The only time it can be a pain in the ass is when we have friends over to sit by the fire at night. You kind of have to yell over the train whistle.
I’m about a 1/4 mile from the train tracks. The trains tend to wake me up at night (I’m a very light sleeper) but I find it a comforting sound.
I’m also directly under the Teterboro Airport flight plan. I don’t sleep very well.
Maybe 100’. I lived in an apartment building in Oak Forest that butted up against the tracks.
Annie-XMas, I know what you mean by the sound being comforting. When I moved out of that apartment to a place in Bolingbrook that was up against a field with no trains around at all, I could hardly sleep - it was way too quiet.
I love trains, though - I really really do.