Watch This Train Rumble by a Maine Home Just Feet Away
I grew up living near the rail line of what today is St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad that runs from Auburn to Montreal, Quebec. That's where my love of trains began watching them go by or switch cars at Paris Manufacturing at the bottom of my street.
Some people don't enjoy living near railroad tracks. Just ask those in Brunswick who raised a fuss about all the noise they would have to deal with when the Amtrak Downeaster expanded there. Funny, but the railroad tracks were there long before you lived near them.
That's the thing about railroad tracks. Most tracks you see have been there for over a century and homes and businesses were developed around them when the railroad was the primary mode of transportation and for shipping goods.
One of those homes is on Newhall Street in Fairfield Maine, and it's ridiculously close to active railroad tracks. Tracks that see two trains a day as they run back and forth to service Sappi Paper in nearby Skowhegan.
This nice-looking home looks very peaceful and quaint from the front. But if you take a look at where the back end of it is, you'll see what I mean.
The track going straight is CSX Transportation's main railroad line and that curve to the right runs over to Sappi, and when trains go by, they are only a few feet away from the house as seen in this video from YouTuber drc930 from 2012.
I've cued it up for you. Listen and watch as you hear the train approach and slowly snake around the edge of the house.
Livermore Falls, Maine is another place where trains make a tight squeeze next to a building downtown.
The business district is one thing, but living in a house that close to the tracks must take some getting used to. I'd be all for it, but would you?