"That's a First" on Railroad Crossings

[theline]

The South Shore Railroad in Michigan City, IN, runs down 11th St. The electric commuter line, which runs from South Bend to Chicago, send trains through here several times a day.

[empirestate]

Though rare, still not uncommon I would imagine.

Methinks not both of these clauses can be true...

[mefailenglish]

This past July, I rode an excursion train ("Coal Goes to War") between Pittsburgh PA and Cliff Wye (near MacDale and Blacksville WV).  Part of the ride included trackage down Main Street in West Brownsville, PA

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=40.026302,-79.886995&spn=0.002378,0.005284&t=m&z=18&layer=c&cbll=40.026302,-79.886995&panoid=0T0XGuyao3fI2XgV51Chkg&cbp=12,61.09,,0,-0.27

Coal trains roll through here regularly during the week.

[cjk374]

I'm surprised people are shocked that some crossings don't have gates.  In my general area, there are several crossings without gates.  Heck, there's 3 crossings in use I'm aware of that don't even have lights!

I work for a shortline in northern Louisiana/southern Arkansas.  On my entire railroad (62 miles), we only have 2 gated crossings.  We cross some busy highways that need gates, but from what I'm told the need for gates (vs lights only vs crossbucks only) is determined by the state highway departments.

Has anyone else ever had a train back up for them at a crossing? I don't know much about trains, but I suppose they're not legally allowed to block a road for "no reason". I say that parenthetically, because I'm not sure exactly what the train was doing at the time - but what I do know that I was checking out CR 835 by the Evercane Sugar Plant, which involved a rail crossing just south of Clewiston. I waited, and after about thirty seconds, the conductor waved me through, after he'd spent another thirty seconds or so inching the train backwards. I waved and headed on my way!

I thought it was pretty cool...unlike the time a freight train added about $10 to my taxi ride.

I believe it states in the GCOR rules (not sure of the number) that a grade crossing cannot be blocked for more than 10 minutes...the length of a burning fusee.

Hopefully someone here will have seen a train crossing a freeway at-grade or something.

I have–James River Freeway, Springfield MO. Okay, I didn't see the actual train, but I know it was there because of the massive traffic jam it caused.

I remember as a child seeing a grade crossing on I-20 between milepost 43 and 44.  It was a wye used by the KCS to serve the Army Ammunition plant at Doyline, LA.  (This plant was also served by the Illinois Central Gulf on the south side of the facility.)  This crossing was equipped only with crossbucks. I never saw a train cross here.  The rails remained in the road until it was reworked in the mid to late 80s.  The remaining rails of the wye outside of the I-20 ROW were pulled up sometime in the late 90s.

[roadman65]

I noticed that on US 127in Michigan north of St. Johns (non freeway segment) there is an at grade railroad crossing that uses something that I have so far only seen used by DelDOT: traffic signals attached to the railroad signal gantry.

On a side note: when I typed one of the words here I accidentally misspelled one common word, but I immediately changed it  right so that Minuetman don't bust an artery.

[JREwing78]

Those are fairly common on heavier-trafficked roads in Michigan. This story in the Toledo Blade goes into more detail:
http://www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/2005/06/20/U-S-6-24-rail-crossing-likely-to-get-exemption.html