Richard Deniker and Roger Nickel think the railroad should be more responsive

Richard Deniker’s cramped living room is tchotchke heaven. Standing in the middle of the place, a visitor feels under siege from advancing legions of vases, wood carvings, display platters, and porcelain statuettes that cling to almost every morsel of open shelf and table space. That’s what happens when a collector lives in the same place for 20 years, which is how long Deniker has resided in this quaint house on College Avenue in the Southside’s Ryan Place neighborhood. Adding to the clutter, Deniker has moved his plants inside from November’s first chilly day, nudging everything even closer together.
Deniker, who has marble-like round eyes and a full head of neatly parted gray hair, stands near the window, listing his complaints against behemoth freight train firm Burlington Northern Santa Fe when he hears a familiar low rumble and high-pitched toot getting closer. “Here comes one now,” he says and goes silent.
The engine screams and growls along tracks about 100 yards from the living room, which begins to lightly shake. The tchotchkes jiggle slightly, and the oval glass dollops that dangle from the chandelier like grapes vibrate visibly. The noise fades.
“Now that wasn’t a big one,” Deniker says. The louder and heavier coal trains wobble the chandelier and the collections in his living room. It’s a scene that’s been repeated more and more often over the past two years.
For most of his time on College Avenue, Deniker says, he had no problems with trains. Now 25 or 30 trains a day chug past this quiet residential street, residents say — including as many as four an hour between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. And residents are fed up with the noise, the diesel fumes, and the inaction of Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
Of course, the tracks were there long before any of the residents, dating back at least 100 years, according to the railroad company. But most of the homeowners on this block, like Deniker, have lived here a long time, too. When residents moved in, the Santa Fe Railway operated the nearby tracks, running just three or four trains each day. “I never even noticed it before,” said Rodney Nieswiadomy, who’s lived on College with his wife Esther since 1959. “Now it shakes the whole house.”
The major increase in train size and traffic came after Burlington Northern’s 1995 merger with Santa Fe formed one of the nation’s largest train companies. It covers 33,500 miles of track in 28 states and two Canadian provinces and has 200,000 freight cars. BNSF runs 31 trains each day through Fort Worth, said Steve Forsberg, director of public affairs for the firm. Most of those go through the Alliance rail yard, one of the main nodes in BNSF’s North Texas network. As comparison, Forsberg said, 1,400 trains chug through various parts of Chicago each day, and one Kansas City, Kan., suburb hears more than 110 trains roll past daily.
When some residents moved to the neighborhood 20 years ago, the rail freight industry was on the verge of bankruptcy, which partially explains why so few trains came through. The industry has since rebounded, due to partial deregulation by the federal government. In the past three years, BNSF has run longer trains on more frequent schedules. In 1996, company records show, BNSF’s system-wide volume was 6.9 million car loads or units. By last year, that had increased by nearly 1.16 million car loads to an annual total of almost 8.2 million. Forsberg said counting car loads or modular units is a more accurate way to track freight volume than by counting trains, which include varying numbers of cars.
Residents along College Avenue feel as if every one of those 8 million car loads rolls past them.
“It’s constant trains,” Deniker said. “I never would have bought this house if I’d known it would get like this.” He has few options. He’s paid off his mortgage and says he’s too old to sell his house and take on another one. But the trains are becoming intolerable, he said. One problem is whistles. Federal regulations require train operators to blow their whistles 1,300 feet before an intersection and to keep tooting until the train blocks the roadway. But with their houses so close to the tracks, neighbors say they can’t sleep, especially in the early morning, when three or four trains pass each hour. “At 4:30 in the morning, I don’t need an alarm clock,” said Lynette Carter, who’s lived in her house on College since 1989.
Another problem is the grinding sound of the engines and the tremors produced by heavy coal trains. Several residents lay part of the blame for problems with their homes’ foundations on the repeated vibrations from heavy trains. “If my chandelier is shaking, that means the house is shaking,” Deniker said. “It’s not much, but over time, that’ll damage the foundation.” He pointed out that homes on the block can’t qualify for government home-improvement programs because of the noise pollution from the trains, which exceeds 75 decibels. Residents also complain about engines constantly lacing the air with diesel fumes.
But what really irks the neighborhood is when trains idle on the tracks, engine running, for long periods of time. On November 1, Deniker said, a BNSF train sat on the double tracks next to College Avenue for 20 hours. When crew members’ shifts were up at 9:30 p.m., they left the train parked there, spewing diesel fumes and noise, until another crew arrived at 4:30 p.m. the next day. It happened again on November 8, Deniker said, when a BNSF train idled behind the neighborhood for nearly 12 hours. Both times, the engines sat directly behind the back porch of Neline Hernandez and her mother Eva, rattling their house, which sits about 50 feet off the tracks. The vibrations are strong enough to break plates in the display cabinet, so Neline and Eva place stoppers underneath their china. Moving isn’t a feasible option, they said. Like Deniker, they have paid off their mortgage.
On those two occasions, and many others, Deniker and other residents called BNSF to complain. Each time, residents got transferred to voice mail, left a message, and never heard back. When they finally talked to BNSF employees, nothing was done. “It’s like the days of the old railroad barons,” said Roger Nickel, who lives across the street from Deniker. “They can do whatever they want.”
BNSF sympathizes with the residents’ situation, Forsberg said, but the company won’t change its ways, nor should it. Whistles may wake some people up, he said, but they save lives, which is why the Federal Railroad Administration sets strict whistle regulations. Collisions increase 62 percent, according to government studies, when whistles aren’t used at intersections. Forsberg added that the majority of trains run at night because BNSF customers load trains during the day. And while the company doesn’t like to leave trains parked, sometimes it’s necessary to allow another train to pass or to stock a new crew. When a train idles, Forsberg said, federal law requires at least one engine remain on. “The fact is, they chose to live near railroad tracks,” he said. “There’s a certain level of noise if you choose to live next to a freeway or D/FW [Airport] or a railroad.”
Fed up with BNSF, residents have turned to the city for help. Deniker and other residents have contacted Fort Worth police about issuing noise tickets to trains that sit too long, though police are reluctant to take that step. They also talked with District 9 City Council member Wendy Davis about proposing a city ordinance to prevent trains from blowing whistles or parking at night in residential areas.
Neither ordinance seems likely to pass. BNSF is governed by federal interstate commerce laws, which prevent local governments from instituting disruptive ordinances. In addition, neither the city nor the Texas Railroad Commission has any regulatory power over the railroad. “You’re dealing with interstate commerce,” Forsberg said. “That’s like passing an ordinance saying you can’t drive on Interstate 35 at certain times.” A California court recently struck down a night whistle ban in Placentia, Calif., ending a long standoff with BNSF and angering residents.
One of the few options open to Ryan Place residents, Forsberg said, is to petition the Federal Railroad Administration to institute a “quiet zone” in Fort Worth, which would allow trains to pass without blowing their whistles. To qualify as a quiet zone, a community must install gates, lights, and bells at every intersection and rigorously police the road to make sure no one drives through the gates. Another option would be installing sound barriers along the tracks, an approach tried recently by Anaheim, Calif., with mixed results.
Forsberg points out that the economy would collapse without the goods BNSF transports, including coal that produces 11 percent of the country’s electricity. “There’s a greater good here,” he said. “We try to be good neighbors, but our first priority is to move freight that benefits all Americans.”
Residents promise to fight BNSF unless it becomes a better neighbor. “It’s as loud as living next to an airport,” said Marilla Elliott, pulling out of her driveway in her SUV. She turned to Deniker and asked, “Want anything from Walgreens?”
“No,” he said, but quickly reconsidered. “Yes — ear plugs.”