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Trains outside Maria Cutchey’s East Vancouver home make her windows rattle, cabinets shake and stacked dishes and glasses vibrate.

At times, blaring bells jolt her awake at night, and the shunting of cars as they are assembled into trains sound like explosions that make her heart race.

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“You’d think a bomb went off on the rail tracks or you’d think the train has rolled over,” said Cutchey, whose north-side unit in the Still Creek Housing Co-op overlooks Grandview Highway and the railway line.

Cutchey has lived in the co-op since 1991. Train traffic was minimal, mostly Via Rail or Amtrak passenger trains and the occasional freight train.

Two years ago, Canadian National Railway increased traffic on the Burrard Inlet Line to up to six trains a day.

Trains go from the waterfront through Strathcona to the Glen work rail yard in the False Creek Flats, then gets funnelled through the Grandview Cut.