BRUNSWICK — While a crowd at Brunswick Station rumbled with the Downeaster’s arrival Monday, neighbors just down the tracks turned their ears to the ground for other sounds.

After the ribbons were cut at the Brunswick Station rail platform, the Amtrak Downeaster train paused for 20 minutes along tracks near the “Brunswick West” neighborhood, where residents have raised concern about noise and vibration from a planned overnight train layover facility there.

From a yard on Bouchard Drive and three other locations in the neighborhood where the 60,000-square-foot building is planned, sound engineer Charlie Wallace took the first recordings of a Downeaster passenger train on the tracks in Brunswick.

A seismic specialist from S.W. Cole also was on hand to study ground vibrations at the site.

From preliminary figures Monday afternoon, Wallace said the results matched previous studies.

“Without mitigation, there will be a severe impact (to residents) due to activities outside of the building,” Wallace said in his office, which is adjacent to the tracks, on Monday.

Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA), told The Times Record this morning that she could not comment on the specific findings of Wallace’s noise study Monday, but that the train uses Amtrak equipment that “complies with all regulations for noise and emissions and all other impacts.”

Quinn said NNEPRA plans to submit a new environmental assessment and updated noise study for the train layover project to the Federal Rail Authority in the coming weeks, a process that will include a 30-day public comment period.

Wallace notes his own interest in the train layover project, for the proximity of his offices to the site, but said the final results intend only to add to the information available about building a train layover facility nearby.

Bob McEvoy and Dan Sullivan, residents of the neighborhood, are among those interested in the results.

Both men are part of an advisory group created by the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA), which is tasked with advising in the construction process for the planned layover building.

Neighbors — as part of the “Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition” — have long argued that the facility will rumble and shake, to the point of creating a disturbance, too close to their homes. They argue that other sites in town should be explored.

Town and state rail officials have consistently reiterated that no other proposed sites for the layover facility are as viable as the so-called Brunswick West site, based on cost and location.

At a Town Council meeting in February, Quinn devoted nearly 30 minutes to explaining why the facility cannot remain in Portland.

“A mechanical facility at the end of the line in Brunswick will support greater flexibility and more frequency and efficiency than a facility 30 miles away (in Portland),” Quinn said at the time.

Wallace said that the information gathered from readings Monday will be added to an existing report on sound impacts at the site, along with sound studies done through the winter in “no-leaf conditions.”

Following that, Wallace hopes the surveys will provide more information for discussions of the environmental assessment of the site.

dfishell@timesrecord.com