by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

The steel wheels and Pointe St. Charles have a shared history but the romance between citizens and the Canadian National Railway has hurtled off the tracks.

The irritated include Sud-Ouest borough mayor Jacqueline Montpetit, who lives not far from the tracks. "We can live with passing trains, but when they're connecting them together it makes a metal screeching on the tracks and then these big booms as the cars get hooked up together," she says. "It makes a hellish noise - cha-ka-chaka - that can last 30 to 45 minutes as they connect 60 or 70 wagons."

Montpetit says the noise monstrosity spares nobody in the trackside area near Mullins. "I jump at night when I hear it," she says. "It wakes children up. CN used to do it in the yards [near the Victoria Bridge]. Now they do it on the lines next to homes."

Residents have written to CN to protest the noisy clatter but their letter was ignored. "I don't find that normal," says Montpetit. The residents held a protest July 8 and CN has finally agreed to meet with them next week.

Though they might give CN officials an earful about their noise woes, the railway doesn't look like it plans to do much, judging by the comments of operations rep Pierre Leclerc. He admits that, "We have maybe 10 or 20 more cars than in the past because we have more customers."

He says the noise seems worse during summer. "It's always worse in the summertime because people have their windows open," he says. "It's normal that the residents want a high quality of life but there's some limitation in the things we can do to compensate."

Pointe residents are also preoccupied with the fate of a three-million-square-foot train yard CN put up for sale in February at the end of Ste-Madeleine. The railway is selling the yards once occupied by former tenants Alstom. CN is mulling over three offers it received in February but makes no promises of what will hapen to the land after it gets sold.

Residents and social groups have pleaded with CN to ensure that it goes to a genuine developer with interest in the area. They are lobbying the government to buy the land, estimated at $20-million. "What we want ultimately is to have certain basic principles respected - an intelligent development with respect for the local population," says Richard Roussel of economic and social development group RESO. He cites jobs, grocery stores and social housing as priorities, and wants existing streets extended into the area.

André Grenier, coordinator of social development group Action Gardien, also has a trio of demands. "We want the sale of the land stopped, that the government consider acquiring the lands and then we want a master plan based on local consultation so the lands can have homes for the population with jobs and services, the things people need," he says.

Grenier, like many locals, fears that the land will eventually remain vacant as developers either buy or speculate on it, or remain handcuffed by the cost of decontamination, which he says will cost "in the hundreds of millions."