A Quiet Zone in Downtown Palestine

PALESTINE — Downtown Palestine will soon be a little quieter. The Palestine City Council has approved an engineering agreement with CTC, Inc. to create a quiet zone near the downtown area. The company will work with Union Pacific and the Federal Railroad Administration to create the zone on South Magnolia and South Sycamore Streets. It will limit the amount of train horns blowing through downtown Palestine. In the quiet zone, residents could still hear train horns. Federal law dictates when train engineers may sound the horn. Palestine’s quiet zone will be one of over 100 quiet zones in Texas, the most of any state in the country. Work on the zone will begin immediately.

Quiet Zone Procedures
• In a quiet zone engineers have no legal duty to sound the horn, but may exercise discretion during emergency situations (i.e. the presence of a vehicle or a person on the track).
• Under federal+ regulations, engineers must sound the horn to warn railroad maintenance employees or contractors working on the tracks.
• If a railroad or individual engineer fails to sound the locomotive horn as required or is unnecessarily sounding the horn in an established quiet zone, they are subject to enforcement action by the Federal railroad Administration