House backing into railway line, will rats be a problem?

[Overdon]

Viewing a lovely house next week, it backs onto a branch line, 5 mins away from a local station.
Not bothered about the noise as I love trains, but mentioned the viewing to someone and they said train tracks are rife with rats. Is this true? Does anyone have experience of living next to a train line and being invaded by rats/or not?

My old house backed on to a railway line. Never saw a rat. I’ve moved to the country now and they’re bloody brazen here!

My grandmother had a railway at the bottom of the garden for 90 years (same house all her life). As far as I know, there were never any rats, at least certainly not in my lifetime (last 40-odd years).

We back onto a railway line, no rats but lots of foxes, but think that's due to the strip of land which runs alongside which is left wild.

Good to hear your replies, I don’t know what would necessarily attract them, but if network rail are messing about with stuff I guess it could disturb them.

The only other thing I could think which would attract them is the off is the waste flushed onto the tracks. But it sounds like it’s not a given there will be a rodent infestation, phew!

Our house is side on to a railway line and next door feed the birds. The rats burrow under our very tall fence and cut across our garden and then burrow under the other side of the fence, cut under her decking and climb her bird feeder. We’ve solved this by digging a 2 foot trench along the fences nailing chicken wire to the bottom of the fence and filling in again. It was a huge job but has solved the problem and we have a lovely rat free garden. The rats aren’t caused by the railway line being there, there are rats everywhere. The rats are however drawn by the large amount of bird food and other open feed that my neighbour leaves out every day. She loves the birds and doesn’t mind the rats!

Agree with Forestcantrun Japanese knotweed is the thing I'd be more concerned about.

Childhood home backed onto a railway, never saw a rat, worse luck. (Would have been about the only thing that might have convinced my mother to let me have a cat!
Foxes on the other hand....

I do not live anywhere near a railway line but outside the back of my house rats are having parties and inviting their mates around and having loads of baby rats.
Reason for this is houses being built behind mine, and builders are constantly digging drains so the rats are being disturbed from their usual habitat. Because of the there s no access to traffic at the back of my house and so none of us in the street have had our waste bins emptied for a few weeks as the local council is refusing to do anything about it.I have just paid £84 to have a pest control man cone round three times and put poison down and am not willing to go on paying.I am in the middle of having a battle with said council about this.They (local council) are beyond a joke,I have been shuttled from one so called official to another, just given stereotyped messages about arrangements been made with the builders to move the bins to a point of access to traffic which I have since found out to be untrue.
I have paid rates and council tax to same council for 52 years now and should get better treatment than this.The council website is a disgrace and the phone service is no better, just keeps hanging on for about half an hour listening o a robot voice telling you to go online!
Sorry for long rant but seeing this thread about possibility of rat invasion got me going

Sorry about typos this is how angry I am now

I lived next to the railway line when I was a child. We saw a couple of rats in the garden because we had a rabbit so they were after the food. My dad was, also, a very keen gardener and had a compost heap which they liked.

No problems here

We back onto a (albeit not tremendously busy) railway line and have water near us too and never seen a rat.

Gah tempted fate now.

I lived on a railway line. To have rats nesting in your house or garden you would need 3 things. Shelter, water and a food source. Keep your garden free of these and you should not have a problem. I work in pest control (I'm not actually a technician though) and the biggest problem we have is people leaving food waste in black bags. This is what causes the majority of our rat problems.

I use to live in a house share that backed on to a railway line in London that was 5 minutes from a station.

The local wildlife were foxes, squirrels and rats. No rat or squirrel issues. I saw the foxes trying to raid the the rubbish on bin day as we used bin bags, however the local cats would keep them in check.

Incidentally the station speaker announcements were found to get too loud - though court cases and appeals - two years after I left, and I lived in the house for 5 years. This meant depending on the lateness of the trains two of us didn't have to leave the house until we heard the speaker.

The main other disturbance was when they did engineering works. This was about 3 times in 5 years.

The first two were about a night each when they replaced broken rails and the noise lasted a couple of hours, but the third was when they had to do a major replacement of the tracks.
We were given 3 months notice that it was to happen over an Easter bank holiday. The work took about 4 days and nights. The lights shined right into my bedroom at night even though the house was the one in the twenty that was furthest from the tracks. The high pitch noise was horrendous and lasted for hours.

Never seen a rat! We did have a mouse living in a rolled-up carpet!

I love backing onto the railway. Not overlooked and I find the faint noise of a train going past at night really comforting. Sort of like the world is going on while I go off to sleep.

No rats in our house when we backed into a train line. The Japanese Knotweed though...

Train waste is no longer flushed onto the tracks but is contained in tanks under the carriage that are vacuum suctioned out when cleaned and serviced.
I think rats would find more hospitable places to live than under the traks in the ballast stone.
Garden sheds and decking are much more likely to attract rats especially if there is a ready supply of food and water about.

@nildesparandum that would be my worst nightmare, I’ve heard terrier teams are very efficient with large infestations.

@RedWingBoots some very useful information thanks.

People seem to be mentioning foxes a lot, we have foxes where we currently live, they are noisy when fighting/ mating but otherwise no issue with them, but it’s not a large population.

We live next to a railway line. I've personally never seen a rat however my cats have left some as presents. Whether these have come from the railway line or from neighbours decking/compost/sheds I do not know

Are you sure they aren't getting confused with living by a canal?

We used to live next to a main railway line (Bristol to London line)years ago, never once saw a rat.
Noise was never an issue too, got used to it quickly. I actually enjoyed it

Over the years, I have lived close to or backing on to railway lines on several occasions.

The only place I have seen rats on a railway line is while changing trains at Birmingham New Street station, and that was a good while ago now. I’ve been there since and no rats.

No rats. I've seen two mice. Plenty of foxes. But mostly an abundance of lovely birds, including a woodpecker, and a female tawny owl that goes full throat at 3am...

Really wouldn't be my first concern!