Residents of Vail, "The Town Between the Tracks," can relate to the problems of living on a railroad line.
Every day, about 45 trains pass through the town on two sets of busy east-west Union Pacific lines. That's up from 43 in 2004, UP officials said.
Each train is an average of 1.5 miles long, carrying goods to and from busy West Coast seaports along UP's Sunset Limited route, one of UP's busiest.
Company officials say the number and length of trains is likely to continue growing, along with the level of imports coming in from China and other booming Pacific Rim nations.
Some Vail residents, like Chauncey Kelley, have learned to live with the nuisance of three or four trains passing through town every hour, all of which blast their horns
"I don't even notice it anymore, except it does tend to interrupt conversations," said Kelley, who lived and worked next to the tracks from 1975, when his family bought the Vail Feed store, until a couple of years ago, when he bought a house in Rancho Sahuarita.
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"Basically, you just stop talking and wait until the train passes by," he said.
Mark Davis, a Union Pacific spokesman, said federal law requires train crews to use the horn as they're approaching a crossing to warn motorists.
"That is the only way to let drivers know that the train is approaching a crossing," he said.
"A crossing collision is one of the more horrific kinds of collisions," Davis said. "For a train crew member, a horn blast is the only way to let them know."
But, as in Sahuarita, rapid growth in the Vail area has increased traffic on Vail Road/Colossal Cave Road, which passes through the community.
Kelley said that makes it tougher for him to get onto the the road to make deliveries.
"It's a different experience now," he said. "Before, when the train horn blew, I just waited until the train went by before I'd leave. Nowadays, when I hear the horn, I get in line."
That's harder to do now, unless he recognizes one of the drivers "and he lets me in," he said.
Ron Sandlin, who moved to Vail six years ago, isn't bothered by the traffic or the noise.
"When I'm stopped for a train, I figure it's OK, because I need to let my engine warm up anyway," he said.
"I grew up around trains," said Sandlin, who moved to a home here from Labuco, Ala., a coal-mining town in north-central Alabama.
"I love the trains," he said.
