SEBASTIAN — Besides worrying about noise, traffic delays, costs, diminished quality of life and other All Aboard Florida issues about which the entire Treasure Coast is up in arms, residents along the east side of Sebastian’s Louisiana Avenue live with a more visceral fear.
Families with children are gravely concerned about what they believe will be increased physical danger when a planned second set of tracks brings passenger and freight trains even closer to their homes.
Louisiana Avenue residents have continually voiced opposition to All Aboard Florida’s planned 32 passenger trains a day, which will fly by at 100-plus miles per hour in route between Miami and Orlando. Added to that are the 14 or so freight trains that already roll through – a number that will likely increase, as the Panama Canal project and related developments lead to a growing rail freight presence in Indian River County.
Mark Lund and his wife, Denise, live in one of about 15 historic cracker homes on Louisiana Avenue, within Sebastian’s historic district.
Their house is a big, two-story “cracker mansion,” circa 1920, on the west side of Louisiana, which began life as a United Methodist Church parsonage.
Even here, on the side of Louisiana away from the tracks, Lund says, passing freight trains cause vibrations that routinely shake pictures off walls and canned goods off pantry shelves.
“Our bed shakes and we don’t even have to pay 25 cents,” jokes Denise.
Directly across the street, right along the tracks, is the small house, circa 1910, occupied by the Lunds’ daughter, Tiah Casher, her husband, Michael, and children, Draven, 9, Landon, 5, and Emmalyn, 14 months.
Here, the family’s concerns go way beyond tumbled cans of green beans.
On a recent visit, Lund led the way to the backyard, where a tire swing hung suspended from a tree limb, close to the where the property abuts the railroad right-of-way a few yards from the steel rails. The children’s bedrooms are at the back of the house, adjacent to the tracks.
“The trains wake me up at night,” 9-year-old Draven says.
Between 8 and 9:30 a.m. that weekday morning, four freight trains passed by, each a couple of miles long, heralding their approach by leaning on their horns at the Main Street crossing to the north and the CR 512 crossing to the south.
Standing in the kitchen of the Lunds’ home as a train passed, the vibration could be felt underfoot; canned goods and other small objects vibrated noticeably.
Inside the Cashers’ little house across the street, a second passing freight caused dramatic vibrating of the water heater pipes, reminiscent of an earthquake.
Pictures bounced, kids’ toys jiggled across the floor.
The following morning, before school, Lund, Tiah and the kids gathered to watch one of the early trains pass by.
Lund scooped up the energetic Emmalyn and everyone stood at the property line as the double-stacked freight cars roared past, heading south. The air rush buffeted everyone, hair blew and the ground shook.
From the yard, the train on the raised track bed towered above everything.
“When we first came here, we actually enjoyed the trains,” Lund says, “. . . hearing the whistles, watching them go by. And we got the house across the street for our daughter and the kids so we could help her with them. Day care is so expensive. But now there are so many more trains every day, and [there will be] 32 more added to that, plus probably more freights. They will be so much closer, and so much faster. Even the Bible says too much of a good thing is not good.”
