Residents Sound Off Over Early Train Horn : Woodland Hills: They once viewed the passing freight with affection, but its wee-hour run now has them and Councilwoman Joy Picus seeing red.

Residents of homes around Hamlin Street in Woodland Hills used to smile and wave when Southern Pacific engineers sounded the horn as their train thundered along the tracks through the neighborhood each day.

These days, however, residents of the area are bleary-eyed, ill-tempered, and about ready to tie railroad executives to the tracks when the big train, whistle blowing, rolls through, because now it often comes in the wee hours, sometimes between 3 and 5 a.m.

“I liked my little train in the morning; you’d wave at the guy and it was kind of fun,” Ariane (Micky) Thayer, 68, grumbled Friday. “But how would you like that at 3 in the morning? Wooooonderful.

“And then it comes back 45 minutes later. What’s the reason for idiotic things like that, for heaven’s sake?”

The reason, Southern Pacific Transportation Co. officials say, is that the train makes local deliveries in the western San Fernando Valley and now gets delayed by construction of the new Metrolink commuter rail system, which has been tying up Valley train tracks during the day for several months.

Rail officials say they are doing their best to route the local train through the neighborhood before 10 p.m. as it loops its way west from a Van Nuys switching station to lumber yards along the Burbank branch and south into Tarzana, and then back along the same route.

They sympathize with the residents, they say, but early morning runs are often the only time they can get through.

“I can understand those people’s point of view, but we need to take care of our business,” said Mike Irvine, director of field operations for Southern Pacific in Southern California. “It hasn’t worked out as well as I would have liked, but we are getting control of it now.”

But residents say the early morning blasts of the train whistle continue, and that the rail company is brushing off their complaints and phone calls. So many frustrated residents have called Councilwoman Joy Picus that Picus, a potential mayoral candidate, contacted Southern Pacific in late May. More than a month later, she got a noncommittal response.

This week, however, rail officials promised Picus and neighbors in conversations that most future runs would be completed by 10 p.m., or midnight at the latest.

On Friday, Picus held a news conference to vent a little steam of her own.

“We’ve all gotten the runaround from Southern Pacific, and the trains are running later and later and later,” she said, standing in the back yard of one frazzled-appearing resident of Hamlin Street, who said he is losing so much sleep he fears for his job.

“It comes out, and just when you fall asleep, it comes back,” Picus said. “All of us are angry, and we are not going to take it any longer.”

Despite Picus’ tough talk, they may have to take it. When Metrolink starts service in late October, there may be more midnight and early morning runs, Irvine said.

“There is going to be some difficulty sometimes,” he said, “but it isn’t going to be for want of effort or as the result of indifference.”

At the news conference, attended by two dozen unhappy residents of several streets in the area, Picus demanded a 10 p.m. curfew for all trains along the Burbank branch, a local rail line that runs near the Ventura Freeway.

Assistant City Atty. Julie Downey said she is uncertain whether the city has the power to enforce such a curfew, because trains are protected by interstate commerce laws. But just as airports can sometimes be brought to comply with local noise-control ordinances, so too might the city control trains, she said.

Picus also unveiled a City Council motion, which she introduced later in the day, calling on the council and city attorney’s office to “take all appropriate legal action to immediately halt the rail activities.”

When told that the motion called for a ban on rail traffic, not just a curfew, Picus said: “If that’s what it says, that’s what I want. Then we’ll negotiate. They’re not good citizens and they’re not good neighbors. They lie.”

Later in the day, a spokeswoman minimized Picus’ remarks and said the motion would be amended to seek a 10 p.m. curfew on freight runs on the Burbank line.

Picus said trains were being run so late in “a deliberate attempt to harass neighbors” and predicted that the situation will get worse once Metrolink goes into service. Irvine responded that trains are legally required to blow their whistles when they approach each road crossing, and that negotiations are underway with county transportation officials in an effort to mitigate the effects of Metrolink on the train runs.

The Burbank line was recently acquired by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, but it continues to be run by Southern Pacific.

The trains have been running through the area since long before most residents moved in.

The local delivery train cannot begin its rounds until Metrolink construction--on the main rail line near the General Motors plant in Van Nuys--ends for the night, Irvine said. It then heads northwest along the main line to Chatsworth, where it switches onto the northwestern end of the Burbank line and heads south and then east--past Hamlin Street--to Tarzana.

Once it drops its freight at various locations, it turns around and heads back to Van Nuys.

The Metrolink crews “work until 7 at night sometimes. And the freight trains going between L.A. and Oakland are out there after 7 p.m.,” Irvine said. “So we try to sandwich the local in as best we can.”

Often, that apparently means as late as 3:48 a.m., the time when the train, horn blowing, passed one recent morning. One of the neighbors, John Vincent, recorded it from his house more than half a block from the tracks on a tape he played at the news conference. The noise was loud and continued for at least 15 seconds.

“If this happens at 4 a.m., forget it,” Vincent said. “You’re up for the night. All we’re asking for is a decent night’s sleep.”