Trains Pass Through Notcross Without Sounding Horn

At 11:04 on Tuesday night, a northbound freight train crossed Depot Street and said nothing at all.

It was, by the City's reckoning, the first time a train had passed through the centre of Notcross without sounding its horn since the line opened in 1870. Several residents came outside to see what had happened.

The Notcross Quiet Zone took effect at midnight Monday following federal review of four upgraded crossings — Depot Street, Third Street, College Street and Holcomb Avenue. Each now has four-quadrant gates and raised medians, closing every path around a lowered gate. Federal rules require a locomotive horn at every public crossing unless the crossing is engineered so that it does not need one. Notcross has now engineered four.

The horn has been the single most requested item in the City's public comment record. It has appeared in every resident survey since 1998, and a 2021 petition drew 2,140 signatures in a city of roughly eighteen thousand.

For much of that period the matter was described as something the railroad ought to address. It was, in fact, something Notcross ought to address.

"That was the whole thing," the City Engineer said. "We spent a long time being annoyed at a train for obeying the law. The horn was never the railroad's decision. It was ours, and it was sitting in the gate budget."

The City had, it should be said, looked into it. In 2019 staff completed a review confirming that the city immediately to our north had established a quiet zone and that trains there passed quietly. The review recommended that Notcross consider doing the same. It was accepted, and a follow-up review was scheduled.

Construction was funded through a combination of SPLOST proceeds, a federal rail-safety grant, and the proceeds from the sale of the former public works annex on Depot Street. Work took eleven months across all four crossings, with no crossing closed for more than four days.

Reaction has been positive and, in a few cases, complicated. Several residents have reported sleeping through the night for the first time in years. A smaller number have reported difficulty sleeping without it. One Depot Street resident described the silence as "lovely, and a little rude."

There is also the matter of the time. The 5:14 was, for a great many households, how you knew it was 5:14.

The Notcross History Museum has responded by installing a recording of the horn in its rail gallery, activated by a button on the wall. Staff report it is now the most-used exhibit in the building, and that it is used most often by adults.

The railroad is the reason Notcross exists. It brought the Air Line Belle, the summer visitors, the Brunswick, and very nearly everything that followed. The City wishes to be clear that it remains grateful to the railroad, and simply prefers it quieter.

The City is aware that this took twenty-six years. It notes, without further comment, that the horn took four seconds.