I should note that we do have some level crossings (grade crossings) here in the UK which have barriers over only half the road; these were introduced in the 60s, and the idea was that it would be easier for a vehicle to leave the crossing if they weren’t trapped between barriers. They are generally called AHBC crossings here, Automatic Half Barrier Crossings. (There are a few examples that are not automatically operated here and there, generally operated by local staff or train crew).
AHBC crossings are slowly being phased out because of people driving round them, and crossings with no barriers at all are almost completely absent in the UK nowadays. Our railways are very busy, and so are most of our roads, so we can’t leave this to chance any more.
I was wondering about this. There doesn’t seem to be as many trains as of late… I’m a bit of a train nerd and will actively look for them on the tracks so I can watch them go by. I was surprised when the last train I saw go by was a short one. But I have also seen embedded engines so they must be pulling tandems and them splitting them off on the go instead of doing a freight yard shuffle.
I had a friend in college who “didn’t recognize” speed bumps in residential areas, so he had a “unique trick” to beat them and that was going 40-50mph over them at an angle so it wouldn’t mess up your car. So he would drive down these residential streets going at 40mph and then swerving into speed bumps so he wouldn’t have to slow down for them. I imagine he’s the type of person who would try to beat trains at crossings too.
Those are called DPUs, Distributed Power Units and they’ve become more common these days as radio control gets more reliable and sophisticated. They can be set to either slave the front end units – the ones with people in them – or use a processor to figure out what the setting should be on its own. The latter is handy for those roller coaster profiles where there might be a couple grade changes between the head end and the DPUs.
I watch the VR cameras in Flagstaff a lot and occasionally a westbound with DPUs will pass through that gets split in Williams, thirty miles east, with part going on to Los Angeles and part going down the Peavine to Phoenix. That’s rare, though and you can’t tell by looking at them. If there’s someone watching and commenting who has access to the train symbols, they can tell.
The same thing happens eastbound trains but they stop and divide in Williams before they get to Flag so we don’t see 'em.
Most crossings in Norway have gates that cover all four lanes going in and out of a crossing, but I’ve heard that they must be designed so that they break without much resistance if a car on the inside were to push them outwards.
While visiting a friend in a rural area once, we played on the railroad tracks, and lived to tell about it. What I noticed was the first thing you can hear when a train is approaching, is the tracks “singing”.
[quote=“Senegoid, post:86, topic:950695”] While visiting a friend in a rural area once, we played on the railroad tracks, and lived to tell about it. What I noticed was the first thing you can hear when a train is approaching, is the tracks “singing”.
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Were you in contact with the metal rails? When I walk on the tracks, I’m generally not touching the rails; only the crossties, and those only with the bottom of my boots. Maybe that’s why the first thing I hear is either the whistle or the rumble.
Took me a minute!
But weren’t Snidely’s victims usually alive and wriggling when he tied them to the tracks?
The crossing I occasionally have to wait at sometimes malfunctions. The train goes by (or indeed, there is no train) and the arm stays down. People wait a few minutes then drive around the bar.
My town [quote=“kayaker, post:89, topic:950695, full:true”]
The crossing I occasionally have to wait at sometimes malfunctions. The train goes by (or indeed, there is no train) and the arm stays down. People wait a few minutes then drive around the bar.
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My suburban NJ hometown was crossed by several train tracks. Once our school bus was stuck behind a bar, which didn’t go up after the train passed. We waited a long time and it never went back up, and somehow, I got off the bus (BAD) and raised the bar by hand (surprisingly easy, but also VERY BAD) and the bus driver drove across the tracks (EXTREMELY BAD).
Yes, I got in trouble at school, as I should have.
My town has a bunch of these, upgraded within the last 20 years from the previous two arm gate. They also have pedestrian gates as well as the vehicle gates.
The impetus was that by upgrading, the trains no longer had to blow a horn while approaching every crossing. We’re a residential town with 7 train stations, and people were getting real tired of hearing horns 18hrs a day 7 days a week.
There’s a major (for this area; think two lanes, but the major through route for the county) highway near me which had something wrong with a set of its railroad crossing bars some years ago. For several months, there was a fairly good chance that the bars would be down; no train in sight or sound, even if you sat there for extended periods of time. Everyone who used that road at all often got used to it, and treated that crossing like a stop-look-and-listen, but unless there were actual signs of a train then drove around the bars (which were the sort that you could drive around.)
Once I came up upon those bars; they were down; there was no train – and the car behind me was a police car, a state trooper. Well. I was not driving around those bars with the police right there – what if the trooper was new to the area and didn’t know about the problem? – so we sat there. No train. And we sat there. No train.
Then the trooper apparently figured out my problem, and drove around both me and the bars. After which I did so also (with one more brief look and listen, just in case.)
– I also once came across more or less the same situation in a local village; except that there were a batch of children holding the bar up so cars could drive across. They shouted at me with some annoyance when I did the full-stop-look-and-listen before I crossed; but I’d been in an accident some years before (much less drastic than being hit by a train, nobody hurt) because I’d listened to somebody else about what traffic was doing, and I wasn’t taking any chances.
I luckily started spotting #3 January last year so it gave me something to do during the shutdown. I’m too lazy to get up in time for #4. I record not only the loco numbers but also the car-types in the consist (the numbers are too too tiny to read easily) plus any notes like Surfliner cars passing through on their way from Beech Grove.
In case you didn’t know, you can go back up to 12 hours. No need to watch live. I use Amtrak’s “Track my train” website to see when they got there/will get there (when it works, that is. Surprising how much it doesn’t). We use it to plan our trips to Maricopa. That place needs a train cam.
We do see some private care as well, once in a while, tacked onto the end.
I once raised a faulty bar for other cars and the first driver in line just argued with me. I was on my bicycle and stopped at a light rail crossing. The oncoming bar went up after the train passed but not the one on my side. So I walked forward and pushed it up. At first I was just going to do it for myself, but then realized I should do it for the cars too.
The first driver wouldn’t cross. “But maybe it’s meant to be down.” or something like that was her argument. Perhaps she didn’t notice that the oncoming gate was up. I pointed out that the train was gone, but she still wouldn’t go. Fortunately the bar raised by itself after not too long, so that settled the argument.
The DPU’s started out west on the long steep grades to cut “helper” crews, but now they use them to equalize the in train forces on big trains everywhere. Big can mean long or heavy or some combination of that. I’ve ran trains that were only 6000 feet long but weighed 14,000 tons, or trains that were 15,000 feet long and 7,000 tons.
Some railroads also believe DPU operation is more fuel efficient, so they use them on small trains as well. I don’t really agree that its more efficient, I don’t see how it could be.
The train will not go any faster, it just helps to distribute the push-pull forces, called buff and draft, so a train won’t break apart or stringline in a curve.
saving it for those 6+ hour delays into FLG.