Noise reduction fencing

sharpe_image

Hi All
We live next to an non-electrified railway line with mainly freight trains. These run 24 hours. We would like to reduce the noise and are thinking about acoustic fencing. Looking for recommendations.
Thanks
Dan

raisingirl

In my experience, the noise of freight trains is a low frequency vibration, which no fence will do much to mask.

If it's high frequency airborne noise, a thick hedge can be as effective as a fence. Sound travels in straight lines, so if the railway line is level with or higher than your garden, you'll need a fence/hedge that is tall enough so you can't see the source of the noise (engine?). If the line is sunk down below the ground level of your garden, an earth bank, possibly with a fence or hedge on the top, may work better. Sound is a 'push', a sort of airborne vibration, so you need something which is either soft enough to absorb that movement (hedge or bank) or heavy enough not to be moved by it (concrete panels that you see along motorways) so the sound bounces off it and reflects it back to the source.

If it's vibration travelling through the ground from the wheels on the rails, you'll be wasting your money.

Singing Gardener

We have Jackson acoustic fencing to shield us from the noise of a main road and it's quite effective. I've no idea whether it would work for train noise though and it's very expensive.