Train Whistles

For some time I have been getting emails from some people who live at the SW corner of 134 and Fairfield about train whistles. I usually explain the history of train whistles in the RL area and what the board did about 5 years ago. So I will explain the story here.

There has been train tracks through Round Lake since the Round Lake was founded, in fact that's why we were founded in 1908 to be a train station. When I took office the ordinances that existed were that NO train whistles were to blow except in emergencies. The village board voted in 1994 to stop blowing the whistles.

In the time frame between 1998 and 2002 there were probably 3-4 fatalities (I think one was a suicide) at the 4 crossings in Round Lake. Then Trustee Danette Kohlmeyer advocated the revision of the ordinance, and when the ordinance came up for discussion it was an extraordinarily heated discussion. In fact if I had to rank it in terms of people "mad as hell" it would be in the top 3! There were people advocating both sides of the issue as well, which is always enjoyable! Safety and noise were the major talking points if I recall.

So when the board finally voted it passed narrowly (3-2) to blow whistles for safety. Since that time the whistles have blown. In addition there have been no fatalities that I know of or accidents that I recall. I have been aware for the last few years of a study done by Mundelien on directional crossing signals that direct the signal, I finally got a hold of the report and the study which I have created as a PDF here (report and evaluation). Having read the report and evaluation.

At the December 18th board meeting I brought the issue up again for the board to consider if we should direct our management team to look into what steps we need to take, if we want to pursue directional signals. The board agreed to research the process. So watch this space for more details!