HAVERHILL — Twenty years is long enough, they said.

Residents living near the MBTA layover facility in Bradford, close to Plaistow, are sick of the noises, odors and fumes from trains that they have put up with for the last two decades.

"We've been going through this for years," said Ralph DiVincenzo, a World War II Navy veteran who has lived at 4 S. New St. since 1952. "I can tell when I have to get up in the morning," he joked, because about 4:30 a.m., the first train starts its engine at the layover area, he said.

Haverhill is at the end of the commuter line into Boston, so the trains are kept at the layover so they'll be ready to take on passengers in the morning. The layover station is next to the Bradford commuter station.

Haverhill City Councilor William Macek has put the layover issue on the agenda for tonight's council meeting. He has invited state Sen. Steven Baddour, D-Methuen, as well as state Reps. Brian Dempsey, D-Haverhill, Barbara L'Italien, D-Andover, and Harriett Stanley, D-West Newbury, to the meeting, which begins at 7 p.m.

Baddour has said the MBTA is working to build a commuter rail stop just over the line from Haverhill to Plaistow. N.H. He said that should happen in the next five years and when it does, he expects the layover station to move there.

Baddour, Senate chairman of the Legislature's Transportation Committee, said the MBTA is negotiating with the owners of land near the Haverhill/Plaistow line about buying a site for a layover station. Because of the talks, he declined to provide further details.

Baddour said he could not guess when all of this might take place.

"I'd like it to be sooner rather than later," he said.

Macek said he's concerned tying the move of the layover to extending the commuter rail to Plaistow will prolong the problem.

"It's incumbent upon the MBTA and the local delegation (to the Legislature) to resolve this matter," he said.

"This goes way back," Macek said of the issue, who noted the layover station was a problem during his first stint on the council in the 1980s. "We have had 20 years of neighborhood complaints. You get to a point where enough is enough.''

Asked yesterday why the layover can't be moved within, say, the next year, Baddour said, "Because we need to find a site and we need money."