is it better to drive over railroad tracks at the normal speed limit or to slow down? how about if it’s on a highway vs. in a city? I’ve commonly heard both sides to this arguement, and as I will soon get a car, it will once again be relevant to me.
Well, for me, It really depends on the railroad tracks and how well their maintained. In my current town (Portland, OR) railroad tracks are well maintained and when you drive over them its not significantly different than driving on a road. I would say drive the speed limit, but be careful.
In my home state (Montana), Railroad tracks are frequently badley kept. Sometimes there will be potholes in the middle of them. They are very jarring when you drive over them. These type of railroad tracks you want to slow down for. You could easily damage your vehicle, even if you don’t seriously damage it you can knock your wheels out of balance or allignment, which is not particularly serious but it can cause vibration at high speeds and quicker tire wear.
Its not so much that driving fast over railroad tracks will instantly destroy your car. Its just the cumulative effect of driving fast over railroad tracks could seriously shorten the life of your car, or raise your maintenance costs. How much is having a working car worth to you?
Its really a judgement call, there’s no right answer.
It all boils down to: do you feel lucky, punk?
Really, you don’t mess with railroad crossings. The smoothness of the road you’re driving on is immaterial. Trains weigh hundreds or thousands of tons and do not stop easily. Railroad engineers hate these crossings with a passion, and you should too.
STOP LOOK AND LISTEN
A train can be on you in a moment. It is not unheard of for them to drag a car for the better part of a mile before they can pull up.
Serious events aside, it’s also bad for your car. short of an out of control semi trailer gaining on you in your mirror, there is no compelling argument to drive over these things at any sort of speed.
The road surface can be rough, but more importantly the gates and flashing lights (if fitted) are not infallible. Train big - you small - go slow.
I would add, that often the railroad crossing is somewhat elevated and you cannot see what is on the other side. I always stop, look and listen, unless it is a flat smooth crossing on a major road. Then I will still slow down to about 30 or so, unless that would impede the flow of traffic too much.
My sister reported seeing a warning sign on the Union Pacific tracks just outside Evanston, Wyoming that read:
THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES TAKES 25 SECONDS TO PASS THIS CROSSING WHETHER YOU CAR IS ON IT, OR NOT.
I’m not sure what that means. Los Angeles is pretty far from Wyoming, and last I heard, LA was not mobile. Please explain. I doubt I’m the only confused one this morning.
The City of Los Angeles is/was a fairly well-known passenger train. I believe Amtrak still runs it now, but it was one of the Union Pacific’s flagship trains back in the heyday of rail travel.
The City of Los Angeles is a named train, Union Pacific No. 104, serving the LA to Chicago run.
The only time one needs to drive slowly over tracks are when they are extremely uneven or are separated by potholes. The idea of driving them fast is the belief that there will be fewer bumps as one bounces the car from the top of one rail or pothole edge to the other. In fact, the car’s tires and frame are going to suffer the same jarring (exacerbated by higher speed), although the passengers may feel the bumps a little less since the duration of the bumps will be shorter–but that car is going to hurt.
In real life, however, few crossings are that badly maintained as to require one to bring the car to a stop before proceeding. For most crossings, where the asphalt has delevloped ruts that make the rails stand out, (because so many people are braking as they cross), simply edging over to the right so that your wheels are on the ridges where the asphalt has been pushed up out of the ruts is enough to make the crossing smooth enough to pass over at the speed limit. (You can also edge over to the left, but then you will sideswipe the oncoming car doing the same thing in the next lane.)
There’s really three independent issues affecting the answer, and the right answer will vary for each crossing depending on these three issues.
- Bumps, potholes, raised tracks, etc: If the crossing has these, slowing is better. If not, there’s no reason to slow down. For unfamiliar crossings, it’s reasonable to assume it’s rough, so slowing is good. Nothing on a public street is going to be so rough that anything below 20 mph is needed, at least assuming your city/county road dept is doing their job. People who slow to 5 mph to ease over a bump or pothole are creating a hazard of being hit from behind for no benefit to themselves.
- Visibility up the tracks and crossing controls: If the crossing doesn’t have signal lights, you’ve got to be going slow enough that you can see a coming train in time to stop short. In a wide-open area, you may be able to see a mile up the tracks in both directions from a mile away as you approach the crossing. That mile is 45 seconds or so for the fastest train in Iowa. If you see no train and are less than 45 seconds from the crossing, you’re fine. You could do that crossing at 30 or 60 or 120 mph with no danger of being hit by an unseen train.
OTOH, if the crossing is on a curve at the top of a hill, you may not be able to see up the tracks at all until you’re within 30 feet of the crossing. In that case, slowing to a near stop would be needed to ensure there’s no train coming before you commit to crossing the tracks.
If there are gates/lights, you just need to be able to stop short should they come on as you approach, or else get through the crossing before the warning time expires & the train arrives. The warning times are set up with the speed limit of the cars & trains in the equation. At the speed limit, or slightly faster, you’ll be fine. Likewise going slow enough that you can always stop short. The danger comes from both going fast, and not paying attention. If you’re going too fast to stop short before you notice the gates are already down, well you’re screwed. So pay attention. Or, said another way, drive slower than the amount of attention you’re paying.
Some folks have suggested you should always slow a bunch for every crossing in case the signals malfunction. If that’s good advice, why don’t we always slow when approaching a green traffic light in case they’ve malfunctioned or some nut is running the red light? A 40mph t-bone with cross traffic is also pretty fatal. We bet our lives on the signals working at every intersection we drive through; I don’t see the need to treat a RR crossing signal as any less reliable.
Since you’re in a rural area, note that different crossing signals have different warning times. There are minimum standards, but some will signal for longer or shorter than others. The more dangerous ones are more likely to be in the country, not in the city.
3) As somebody else pointed out, visibility of the road on the other side of the tracks. Anywhere, anytime, you shouldn’t drive so fast that you can’t stop short of the farthest ahead you can see. Hill crests, sharp curves, fog or blizzard conditions can all require slowing down. So can crossing RR tracks running on embankments. Here’s an example of driving faster than you can see http://www.ncsbs.org/crash_reports_2004/bus_overturns_stlouis.htm
Finally, I’d include your car in the equation. I’ll run my Bronco at speed over rough crossings that I’d slow waay down for in the Porsche.
depends on where the train is 
Thank you both for the clarification. I had some very strange mental pictures going for a while, but it’s all better now.
Thanks Guy, I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m driving my Porsche around.
porche, ford tempo, what’s the difference?
Sorry. My intent wasn’t to be a small-dicked jerk.
FTR, my daily driver is a 1992 Bronco with 94K miles on it, and the Porsche I bought both used & wrecked while in college 25 years ago (yes, my money, not Daddy’s). I restored it myself and can’t seem to part with it even after all these years.
My point was that low-slung cars, or cars with stiff suspension will be a lot less happy going over any given bump than other sorts of cars. For that matter, an older, rattier car may have suspension components that are getting weak, so undue strain is something to be avoided if you’re driving a beater.
There is a bit of a difference here.
I’ve never known a four-way traffic light to show a green aspect to all directions, but I have personally witnessed grade crossing boom gates and lights fail to operate as a three thousand ton coal train went through (we drove straight to the nearest station and reported this, BTW). Sorry, no cite, so you’ll have to take my word for this.
You’re dealing here with railroad signalling systems (even as a car driver) and not traffic lights operated by your local roads authority. The two are very different. A normal traffic light may operate on a timer (no worries here) or it may operate on a road-embedded sensor system (again no worries as the triggering vehicle would already be stopped and therefore not likely to T-bone you at 40MPH). A railroad system is different. It is designed to allow this heavy train to maintain its momentum, therefore the sensor (in this case often a circuit in the rails closed by the wheels and axles of the train) is located some considerable distance away from the crossing. The engineer would have no way of knowing if it had failed, and no way of stopping in time if it had. The difference here (I’m going on the Australian model assuming the US is likewise) is that a four-way automotive traffic light provides a signal to everybody approaching it. A grade crossing gives no signal to the train engineer. He assumes the cars have stopped. A problem with this is that grade crossings tend not to be in urban areas (well, some are), where bridges are used instead. They are usually out in the back of beyond, where train frequencies are lower. This introduces the problem of railhead rust, snow, or dirt interfering with the signalling circuitry and the train not “registering” at the grade crossing. Not exactly a common occurrence, but it happens from time to time, and it’s something I believe car drivers should be aware of when using these things. As I said, I’ve witnessed one example of it myself. A four-way traffic light is much more foolproof than this meeting of road and rail transport.
Another way of looking at it would be, instead of having a green light which tells you the opposing cars have stopped for you, having a green light which tells you the opposing cars have right of way, but there are none coming at that particular moment, so you can go for it (it thinks!). The latter is obviously a more dangerous system, and that is in effect what we have at grade crossings.
You’ll just have to forgive me for the City of Los Angeles thing. I sometimes forget that not everyone can remember (but just barely) when Herbert Hoover was elected president.
The Union Pacific had two fast trains, one named after Los Angeles and the other after San Fransisco. The City of Los Angeles made a 33 hour run from Omaha to Los Angeles. The only faster train was the unit train that brought live hogs from Chicago to Los Angeles for Farmer John. At least that’s what the City Conductor told me one time.
My rule is make sure you have enough momentum to coast over the tracks, and have very low opinons of those who creap over the tracks so slow that if their car stalls, well if they’re lucky they will be looking for a new car.
Also slowing down too much can interfere w/ traffic and cause dangerous conditions on the road for other cars.
I agree with all your points. The reliability of railroad signals, particularly those in rural areas on low-use trackage, are somewhat less than the reliability of urban traffic signals.
The debate, if there is one, is on how much less reliable, and how much extra precaution to take as a result. And that’s a qualitative judgement based on one’s personal perception of acceptable incremental risk versus incremental hassle to avoid the risk.
At the same time, recognize there are countervailing concerns as well. For example: even at properly functioning traffic lights at a road intersection, there’s always the possibility of some drunk / nutter / fleeing criminal ignoring his red light and plowing into you as you transit the intersection on the green. The much greater traffic density on roads versus railroads means that this risk is larger on roads, than on railrods, where we agree there’s a 100% chance the train won’t (can’t) stop even if the train engineer notices the signals have failed to stop car traffic.
There is some number which is the total risk of crossing a road intersection, which risk is the sum and/or product of all these factors, plus another 30 you/I haven’t mentioned. Ditto for a railroad crossing. Which risk is bigger, and what’s the marginal contribution of the various factors and how they trade off is something for the traffic engineers and statisticians.
For me, the factors I can readily identify seem to come to a close-enough equal tradeoff that I consider the difference moot. You (and everyone else) are, of course, welcome to come to a different conclusion. vive la difference.
Is the OP about safety or about comfort to the occupants and damage to the car when crossing railroad tracks? I assumed the latter at first. Please clarify.
Jonathan Woodall’s Law of Crossing Railroad Tracks manates that Jonathan Woodall’s car be going at least fast enough that if it stalls while crossing, it will nonetheless make it well clear of the tracks.
That being said, that’s probably 15 MPH or higher barring a grade.
I agree. I do my slowing down before I get to the tracks unless there is a visibility of a couple of miles both ways. Then if all is clear I speed up and get across in a hurry. I don’t cross enough tracks in the lifetime of an auto to worry too much about hard usage on the suspension.
There is a crossing on US 395 at Kramer Junction on the Mojave dessert through which freight trains roll at 70 mph or so. It’s amazing how fast one of those babies bears down on you.