According to legislation, every time a train comes to a crossing, the operator is obliged to blow the train whistle three times - one long, one short and one long.
But this safety rule is driving residents to distraction - especially since the number of train crossings has increased in the early morning hours.
Dentville, Amblepath, the North Yards and other neighbourhoods have united against the noise pollution of overblown whistle and increased night time and early morning train shunting.
"It's almost like they relish sitting on that horn and just letting it go for a while," said rail side resident Steven Hill.
More than 130 residents signed petitions demanding a stop to the seemingly increasing noise, and on Wednesday (Sept. 29), District of Squamish council and staff met with CN mountain region general manager Richard Miller, assistant vice-president John Orr and public affairs officer Kelli Svendsen to see if they can resolve the issues.
Mayor Greg Gardner said he learned that whistling is legislated, but that drivers may be overdoing it.
"This [whistling] is the minimum, and it's supposed to be the maximum," he said.
Gardner said he assumes night time shunting - a new disturbance - is a result of Squamish Terminals needs.
"My understanding is it's the customers who ship goods through Squamish Terminals who need to have it done at night," said Gardner.
"Now that we know, we're going to have a three-way meeting with Squamish Terminals, CN and the District of Squamish to make arrangements to minimize that late night shunting to a reasonable basis."
Vice president of Squamish Terminal operations, Joe Webber, said he's looking forward to the meeting but denied any changes in Squamish Terminals business practices.
"Our operations haven't changed since the dawn of Squamish Terminals - we discharge railcars on the day shift and sometimes on weekends and we've never changed that."
Gardner said overall this amount of involvement on CN Rail's part is a step in the right direction.
"[CN Rail] very much do understand the issues, which I guess would be hard not to given the level of concern coming out of Squamish."
The District of Squamish received a commitment from CN to make sure their operators comply with the three whistle maximum.
"They've also committed to joint monitoring of that with the District of Squamish."
The new crossing barrier outside Amblepath raised another issues since it includes overhead bells and lights to meet Transport Canada's requirements for "public grade crossing within an area without train whistling."
Gardner said CN agreed to work with the district on an application to stop excessive whistling, but did defend the use of the safety measures to a certain degree.
"We have some investigations to do about how to move that process forward but we have to be careful with that - there is a safety reason why we have train whistles."
