Train complaints addressed for now

Talk about it

The Rosemount City Council has made at least some progress addressing complaints about trains in the city, but concerns about rail traffic aren’t likely to completely quiet down until the city can finalize a deal to silence locomotives’ horns.

Rosemount City Council members met with Progressive Rail president Dave Fellon May 12 to follow up on a complaint about the storage of train cars on sidings in Rosemount and the constant blowing of train horns as the rail company, which operates from a depot at the corner of Highway 3 and County Road 42, shuffled cars around early in the morning.

Fellon has moved many of the cars since Rosemount resident Bruno DiNella made his complaint in April, but he said the train horns won’t go away anytime soon. Fellon said federal law requires trains blow their horns when they approach road crossings.

“It’s not by our choice,” Fellon said at a city council work session last week. “When I’m an engineer, I don’t want to hear it either.”

The city has spent years working with local railroads to establish a quiet zone in Rosemount. That requires improvements including new road crossings that make it impossible for cars to drive around stop arms. The city hopes to have those improvements done soon, but getting the quiet zone established has been a long process and it requires cooperation from larger railroads like Union Pacific, which operates on the tracks through Rosemount.

Fellon said he will support the quiet zone when it is established.

In the meantime, DiNella said he’s happy with the progress he has seen.

“I have noticed an improvement. Quite a bit of an improvement,” he said. “I look forward to a quiet zone.”

Tags: local news, local government, news, rosemount