Comment EI-32480
Received or sent (printed as 10/3/2022)
For the past two years the railroad has been working on the tracks, raising them so they make more noise, and parking their cars behind my house with their klieg lights on all night long. I am writing you with a request to deny the merger between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, docket number 36500. Much to my dismay, the railroad is destroying my house. My house was built in 2016 with full-cut boards and plaster and lathe. I have lived here for 45 years. Last winter the porta cachere started to pop and snap. I thought insects had gotten into it, but after calling the pest control people, that was not the case. This summer I noticed one of the top sashes of my porch window had dropped. I looked again a couple of weeks ago, and two more of them have dropped. These sashes have been attached to the frame since I moved here 45 years ago. My only conclusion is the vibration of the railroad which is shipping heavier and longer trains (2 miles most of the time) every day. To increase the number of trains would surely damage my house further, not to mention those homes and businesses along the route. If you do the math, each gallon of crude oil weighs 7.21 pounds. Take that times the 27,000 gallons per car, and you have 19,467 pounds per car, and multiply that by the additional trains suggested to be added – 104 – and you have 20,245,568 pounds of moving material running down the road. That is going to set up major vibrations. It is impossible, in my opinion, to mitigate that damage. The tracks are about an acre away, and there is a large stand of trees between the house and the tracks which SHOULD absorb some of the vibration. However, it is too much for the buildings to withstand. I have no idea what other damage has been, or will be done to my home.
Submitted by: Ann Louise Geiger · Princeton, IA
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
Permanent address docketyard.org/d/FD-36500/comment/EI-32480 · back to the docket sheet