Living near train tracks

[Deleted User]

My partner at the time rented a property with 3 other individuals that backed onto a TFL track which had passi g trains every 5 minutes or less. It was a long garden and the sound wasn't so much an issue. The major issue that people overlook with tracks is rats and the problems they can cause. The area was over populated with them. After moving in we heard them crawling inbetween the walls. That's when you know you have a major problem. We spotted some running across the kitchen on occasions. One night one of the tenants was asleep and awoke to a rat on his head. 2 tenants moved out early. She had pest control called out a number of times but it was suggested she move as it was an issue that couldn't be avoided due to the location. The problem was that the owner just hadn't maintained the property well enough allowing the rats to literally take over. Just do your research really is all I will say. 

330d

Anamox said:

It looks like a medium busy route, nowehere near as bad as a mainline but a lot busier than a sleepy branch line due to freight. At night it is fairly quiet with only the necessary track maintenance trains running, I can see three paths between 1am and 3am which they may use for this purpose but it'll be infrequent. In the Autumn you may get a railhead adhesion train run past at 3am a few times per week, it'll zoom past though. The first passenger train passes at 5am but it's an express to Bournemouth routed that way because it is running early, they route elsewhere for the rest of the day. In the majority of the day it is a mix of 3/4 passenger services an hour and 1/2 freights per hour. If every freight train ran that has a slot it would be around 25 services per day, but this is extremely unlikely as freight is based on demand.

The line speed looks to be 70mph, and with the types of train running I'd say they're likely to be at 70mph if you're bang on in the middle, slower if you're nearer either station. Wilmslow is a fairly busy station with only 4 platforms (only 2 look like stopping services use them) so you may get trains stopped on the track running into Wilmslow as they'll have signals to wait for space. It's quite likely freight will get trapped at these signals.

Sundays look fairly similar for passenger trains but seem to have less freight running.

Regarding the future, I highly doubt they'd increase the quantity of services or speed, the line looks like it is running at it's maximum capacity already.

Thank you very much for the info.
The house i am looking at is in the middle between the stations. 
A few questions if you dont mind;
- You mention around 3/4 trains a day. Do you know what times these will be?
- The fright trains worry me. Im assuming these are not high speed but can be noisy and take longer to pass?

330d

I have also had a look on http://www.extrium.co.uk/noiseviewer.html.
Anyone had any experience to how accurate this map is?
According to that, the property comes under;
- 65-69.9dB as the 24hr average reading. 
- 60-64.9dB as the 7am to 11pm reading
- 55-55.9dB as the night reading.

I know its difficult to say, but are the above readings high or normal when living near tracks?

SouthLondonUser

Parking the whole virus issue for a moment, are you looking to rent or to buy?

If buying, you shouldn't think only of how the noise will affect you, but also of what potential buyers will think of it. Not only do properties near train lines tend to be worth less, they also tend to be harder to sell. This isn't always rational but the market isn't always rational, and you don't make the market. I have seen quite a few cases of properties which were near trainlines and took forever to sell, despite being actually much less noisy than properties closer to the main road and related traffic. Of course I cannot quantify this exactly, nor can I know precisely to what extent my experience is, or isn't, representative, but it's something I'd keep in mind.

KxMx

Personally I wouldn't live so near to a train line. The train noise would soon fade into the background, but maintenance will be late to early, bank holidays, lines can be closed at weekend for works etc.

I am still getting over a school across from me which was knocked down then re built. Over ran by 18 months (ended up taking 3 years), noise from before school hours to after school hours 5 days a week, every Saturday early until 2pm and all day every bank holiday. I felt sorry for the staff trying to teach but they got to leave at the end of the day!

When I move next I'm
thinking harder about any potential disruption.

Anamox

Hi,

I mentioned 3/4 trains an hour, not per day. They’ll be all over that hour, potentially two at once or sometimes 15 minutes or 45 minutes apart.

Freight trains will move slower, be louder and take longer to pass but again; it depends how quickly you get used to things! This is on one of the main routes to the massive Trafford Park Euroterminal which is where shipping containers for Manchester and the region are delivered by train. It would still be subject to the numbers I mention though.

As for noise levels I couldn’t help you as I cannot load that link on my phone. If you can search any station on it I recommend typing “Ribblehead” as this is a countryside station with similar rail traffic to Styal and Wilmslow. Ribblehead is virtually silent until a train passes, and would be a very tranquil place to live. It will give you an idea of decibel readings elsewhere.

Anamox

KxMx said:

Personally I wouldn't live so near to a train line. The train noise would soon fade into the background, but maintenance will be late to early, bank holidays, lines can be closed at weekend for works etc.

I am still getting over a school across from me which was knocked down then re built. Over ran by 18 months (ended up taking 3 years), noise from before school hours to after school hours 5 days a week, every Saturday early until 2pm and all day every bank holiday. I felt sorry for the staff trying to teach but they got to leave at the end of the day!

When I move next I'm
thinking harder about any potential disruption.

Maintenance on the railways is fairly infrequent, your comparison of a long term building project is very different. I grew up with a railway at the end of my garden very similar to Imran’s choice and I only saw engineers working overnight twice in 15 years. We’d maybe see engineers doing small daytime projects once per year, but they didn’t last more than a day. Downtime on a railway is expensive, so it’s rare unless it’s a main line.

Anamox

SouthLondonUser said:

Parking the whole virus issue for a moment, are you looking to rent or to buy?

If buying, you shouldn't think only of how the noise will affect you, but also of what potential buyers will think of it. Not only do properties near train lines tend to be worth less, they also tend to be harder to sell. This isn't always rational but the market isn't always rational, and you don't make the market. I have seen quite a few cases of properties which were near trainlines and took forever to sell, despite being actually much less noisy than properties closer to the main road and related traffic. Of course I cannot quantify this exactly, nor can I know precisely to what extent my experience is, or isn't, representative, but it's something I'd keep in mind.

I don’t know where you get the idea that they’re worthless or hard to sell. Depending on where you live in the country it’s actually more likely to have little influence on the price or viewership levels. In the Home Counties you’ll see that houses backing onto railways are as expensive as those that don’t, and they go onto the market and come off the market as quick as those that don’t. You’ll see that in the northeast the houses closest to the railways, including those backing onto railways, are most expensive and the most desirable as their commuter links are best. Where I grew up in Hertfordshire the best houses on our small housing estate had a branch line at the end of the gardens, the properties today are £100-150,000 more expensive than similar sized properties on lesser desirable areas on the estate; showing that sometimes the most desired area to live is closest to the railway, just because it happens to be nicer regardless of the noise. Houses there were around £80,000 in the mid 90s, and are £600,000 today for a 4 bed detached, they have huge rental potential but generally wealthier families buy them as family homes. 

They are far from worthless, I get a first hand view of thousands of railway properties and I often out of interest check Rightmove when I see nice railway properties with for sale boards... some are in the millions. 

KxMx

Good point re main line.

Ours is a mainline and bits of it close for up to 6 weekends several times a year for works, with replacement buses running instead of trains.

Easter/Christmas/New Year closures also happen with tedious regularity!

Usually a good notice period but not always.

I'm speaking of recent experiences with the last couple of years

SouthLondonUser

Anamox said:

SouthLondonUser said:

Parking the whole virus issue for a moment, are you looking to rent or to buy?

If buying, you shouldn't think only of how the noise will affect you, but also of what potential buyers will think of it. 

I don’t know where you get the idea that they’re worthless or hard to sell. Depending on where you live in the country it’s actually more likely to have little influence on the price or viewership levels. In the Home Counties you’ll see that houses backing onto railways are as expensive as those that don’t, and they go onto the market and come off the market as quick as those that don’t. You’ll see that in the northeast the houses closest to the railways, including those backing onto railways, are most expensive and the most desirable as their commuter links are best. Where I grew up in Hertfordshire the best houses on our small housing estate had a branch line at the end of the gardens, the properties today are £100-150,000 more expensive than similar sized properties on lesser desirable areas on the estate; showing that sometimes the most desired area to live is closest to the railway, just because it happens to be nicer regardless of the noise. Houses there were around £80,000 in the mid 90s, and are £600,000 today for a 4 bed detached, they have huge rental potential but generally wealthier families buy them as family homes. 

They are far from worthless, I get a first hand view of thousands of railway properties and I often out of interest check Rightmove when I see nice railway properties with for sale boards... some are in the millions. 

I never said worthless - read what I wrote.

I said that not only are they worth less, they also tend to take much longer to sell. Where do I get this idea from? From my experience and that of many, many people I know who experienced the same in London's zones 2 to 4. Like I said very clearly, I cannot know for sure how representative this experience is, maybe elsewhere it's different, but it's definitely something to keep in mind.

I know about 6 people who struggled to sell properties near the train lines. Their agents all reported that whether the garden overlooked the train tracks was one of the first questions, and that many potential viewers did not even want to book a meeting when they heard "yes" as an answer. Now this was after the Brexit vote - in the bull market of 2011 - 2015 anything would sell.

Before buying another property around the end of last year, I monitored quite a few properties I was interested in in my area. I did notice that those near the train lines tended to be bigger, with bigger gardens, cheaper by a good 10-20% than those not on the tracks, yet took much longer to sell. I know of about 3 such properties that have been on the market for more than 6 months.
Again, maybe elsewhere it's different, but don't just assume that - do keep it in mind and double check.

As for those sale boards in the millions, that's completely and utterly irrelevant. The real questions are: how much are the actual sale prices (not the asking prices) and how do they compare to those of properties not on the tracks? How long do those properties take to sell vs those not on the tracks? Etc.