Trains Biggest Complaint from Powder Springs Residents

During my 12 years on the City Council, the most consistent complaints that we had were about freight trains. Train horns , trains are too slow or fast, trains are too long and too many. I will address each of the complaints.

Train horns: Railroads are required by a regulation set down by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to sound a horn at every crossing except "silent" crossings. The horns must even sound at a certain decibel level.

Silent crossings are defined as those where autos can, in no way, evade the crossing gates. More on this later down the page.

Trains are too slow: This is because there are so many trains that they cannot fit on one track and a few sidings here and there. In our town we also must put up with trains entering and leaving the "intermodal" station located about 8 miles down the track towards Austell.

The intermodal yard is a gussied-up term meaning trains come in and unload truck trailers and sea-going containers. These then become trucks that you see on the highway.

Back between 1996 and 2001 we (PS and Cobb County) tried our best to stop this project knowing what would happen. I and a few others were volunteers who caused the Norfolk Southern (NS) Railroad plenty of grief over this.

We were joined with former Mayor Richard Sailors and then Council Member Brad Hulsey, and other members of the council. The one reason that I decided to tun in 1999 was that I thought that Powder Springs had some spine when another nearby city through in the towel.

As a result there was a court case; we lost because the jury just could not understand all of this and they didn't pay proper attention, they thought that they we giving us a win. Not so, they just never paid attention to the judge's instructions.

Trains going too fast: Never.

Too many trains: Similar to the above. Since 1982 rails have been deregulated. This allows them to haul freight for cheap. That is why you see all of those truck companies and sea-going vessel containers on trains. You might see them stacked on top of one another. These are called "stack" trains. This has been big business to the rails but can cause misery to cities like us.

The bright spot is that this reduces the number of trucks plying the interstates. Perhaps you see these big yellow engines pulling coal through town. That is western low sulfur coal going to area power plants.

Railroad folks call these "run through" trains where they do not change engines along the way. This saves them time and surely money.

Good news: Because of the railroad settlement we received over $3.5 million. That allowed us to build Lewis Road and the overpass which you can take to avoid the increasing number of trains. The NS paid us off so that we would not appeal the case (see above).

Left over from that is enough money for us to put in a .

Certain things must happen first: An engineering study, a review by the FRA and then the final ok by the NS. That will take some time but all of this is in the works.

There is lots of interest in . There is also a lot of misunderstanding. I will write a column after we get through the city manager and closed meeting controversies. Thanks for reading.