Franklin resident Pat Robinette stands by the fence separating her yard from the Louisville & Indiana Railroad tracks in 2015. Robinette’s home was located about 20 feet from the tracks.
Daily Journal Archive Photo
News from around Johnson County as reported on Jan. 19 in the pages of the Daily Journal and the Franklin Evening Star from the last 111 years.
On this day in 2015, the main story in the Daily Journal was about how the prospect of more trains on the railroad in Franklin was leaving neighbors rattled.
When a train rolled by a Franklin woman’s house, picture frames on her bedroom wall rattled, and she couldn’t have a conversation with another person without shouting. These times were better than when trains parked on the tracks behind Franklin Park Village resident and retiree Pat Robinette’s neighborhood.
The Louisville & Indiana Railroad line was planning to run 10 to 15 more trains through per day that were heavier, longer and faster. Hundreds of homes and apartments backed up to the tracks, and hundreds more were less than 1,000 feet away.
Robinette couldn’t even imagine how much noisier her home would be.
“It’s going to be terrible, even if they run at the speed they are now. That is just going to be so much noise, vibration on your house, just deterioration of our community. We’re not going to get people to move out here that are going to want to hear that noise all the time,” she said.
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Other memorable Johnson County stories from this day
2001
State officials were investigating the illegal dumping of hazardous waste at Edinburgh’s old town dump, located north of the town on County Road 700 East.
1991
Camp Atterbury, which has trained American soldiers for decades, was at it again, as more than 2,400 soldiers trained at the camp before heading for Saudi Arabia and Operation Desert Storm.
1965
Johnson County’s three auto license branches reported sales were “slowed” somewhat by a recent snowstorm, but were still ahead of 1964’s numbers. An estimated 5,200 license plates had been sold since Jan. 1 in Franklin, Edinburgh and Greenwood.
