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Augustina Harker has avoided relaxing and playing with her partner and two children in the backyard for the past three summers because of the noise from a rail line used as a staging area behind her house in Winnipeg.

“It’s like you’re inside of a factory,” Harker said, adding that the smell of diesel periodically penetrates her home. “It shakes the house when those cars are hitting together.”

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Harker and other residents of the east Winnipeg neighbourhood told a tribunal last year they hear valves releasing, engines throttling, trains braking and freight cars banging at all hours. “It’s an extraordinary disruption,” she said in an interview Friday.

Harker may be able to take heart. The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a challenge by the Canadian National Railway Company to an earlier ruling that CN’s railway activity was too noisy for residents.

The initial May 2017 decision by a Canadian Transportation Agency tribunal ruled “that the noise levels caused by CN’s operations constitute substantial interference” and “are not reasonable, as they cause an excessive impact on the residents.”