IPSWICH — About 30 angry residents fed up with being awakened by blaring train whistles packed the Selectmen's Meeting Room last Friday morning.
They didn't much care for what they heard, and what they heard is they're going to have to put up with the din for at least another 60 days.
To understand why, you have to go back to a selectmen's meeting in February of this year.
The Federal Railroad Administration requires train whistles to be sounded at every intersection not equipped with adequate safety measures to prevent automobiles from getting on the tracks in the path of locomotives.
However, exceptions are made for communities with "heritage bans," some of which have been in place as long as 100 years. As long as the crossings are outfitted with basic gates, warning lights, signs and bells, the railroad administration allows them to continue as "quiet zones."
To maintain their quiet status, towns must prove all their crossings, on average, meet national safety standards. Ipswich was the only town on the North Shore to fall short: Two train-versus-car accidents had occurred at the Topsfield Road crossing within the previous five years.
That made the safety record at the crossing unsafe in the eyes of the Federal Railroad Administration, and in need of further safety improvements.
One of those accidents is past the five-year window the agency uses for its calculations, but the other doesn't come off the table until next March.
At their February meeting, selectmen decided to ask the Federal Railroad Administration to waive that accident out of the calculation now, even though FRA representative Randy Dickinson told them there was no chance their request would be granted.
It wasn't, and in the meantime, a deadline to present preliminary plans for safety improvements at the crossing passed, so Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority engineers were ordered to begin sounding their horns.
Now a plan has been provided, but there's a process it must pass before the horns can by statute be turned off, and it will likely take at least 60 days.
"In this case, the ball got dropped," said Dickinson, who was in attendance once again. "Now we're trying to accommodate this community."
Several residents rose to vent their anger.
"If it's such a safety issue there shouldn't be quiet zones anywhere," Liberty Street resident Shirley Berry said.
Berry also complained one early morning train seems to be operated by a "real cowboy" who leans on the horn long and loud.
After several residents reiterated Berry's complaint, Dickinson warned them to be careful what they wished for. The quieter train operators are probably not obeying the law, he said, which requires them to sound two long, one short and then two more long blasts at every intersection.
There were several inquiries about temporary measures that might be taken immediately, but Ron Ries, staff director at the FRA, said all of them would require approval that would take as long as approving the plan the town has already submitted.
Dickinson seemed to tire of the repetitive complaining and said residents and town officials need to accept the fact that the horns are not going to be shut off, and the best thing to do is cooperate with federal and state agencies to get the town's plan approved.
If it is, and if voters approve a Proposition 2 1/2 debt exclusion that could be on the fall Town Meeting warrant, the town would have until 2010 to make the improvements.
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