We have found and reserved our perfect home. Great area, we have one little baby who is 6 months old and it's close to a primary school and has everything you need. It is about 200 feet from the east coast main line and I'm not sure what to do. You get a slower train once or twice an hour, high speed intercity trains once or twice an hour, and the odd freight each day and neighbours said the odd freight about 1am but generally all trains finish about 11pm.
Not concerned about hearing it from inside, but we expect to have windows and doors open a lot and you'll hear jt from the garden. You do have to stop talking a few seconds until it passes.
Google overwhelmingly says you get used to it, but perhaps these are people that didn't mind living next to a railway line when they bought their place. Noises do annoy me! But train noise isn't as bad as cars, other than the freight ones.
Anyone got any experience? It's a 10 year home for us, dh is fine with it so it's on me! Alternative is wait for another build ready in the estate, further from the line. Likely would be more expensive or same price and slightly smaller.