Recently, we were stopped at a railroad crossing due to a train. Even after the train cleared the crossing, the gates did not go up. The train was out of sight [and this is not the situation where the train pulled into a yard (which involves a lot of back and forth crossings that keep the gates down)].
At this particular crossing, a siding appears to let two trains pass. When the gates finally lifted, my son could see the train had stopped down the tracks aways, but perhaps not quite far enough initially. This made me wonder…do train engineers get feedback when the whole train has cleared the crossing AND the switch tripping the gates…before stopping to wait for a passing train?
As far as I recall, the train has to completely clear the track circuit that activates the gates. The track circuits are sections of track that the train interacts with either electrically or physically, but not under manual control of the engineer.
For tracks that can have trains run bi-directionally, there is an equal operation distance on each side of the crossing. For unidirectional tracks, the circuit usually ends a very short distance from the crossing.
And, the engineer only operates the train. All signals are handled automatically.
While I realize this, the engineer must judge where to stop his train (per my scenario previously described). As such, does the engineer get feedback so s/he knows when s/he’s cleared the automated switch for the crossing gates?
However, growing up next to a RR crossing, the engineer would have one of his brakemen stand beside the track & tell the engineer, via, radio when the crossing guard arms went up. At this time the engineer would stop the train. They would let the auto traffic pass before they would back up to couple/uncouple cars.
Sometimes the brakeman had the engineer stop the train too soon. When that happened, the whole train had to be moved a short distance to let the arms go up. Often the move was less than five feet.
As I understand it, the RR is only allowed to stop auto traffic for a certain amount of time. That is why they let auto traffic pass in the middle of them “building a train”.
That is not true. I asked about this in a thread and apparently trains fall under the Feds who have made no laws regarding blocking traffic and local laws that do so run afoul of the Supremacy Clause