Got a quickie for the policemen on this forum - I know you are out there.
Train watching - arms go down, signals flash - no train. Maybe one of the usual pigeons set it off. They have trouble in that area.
Cruiser - gentleman inside on cell phone, didn’t hesitate but instead pulled around the arm and went on his way up the street, still talking on his cell phone.
I listen to a scanner and know those cell phones are used for conversations they don’t want on the radio. So he probably wasn’t talking to dispatch to go to a call. He was talking to who knows, and none of my business, but it irritated me that first he went around the gates and 2nd that he didn’t stop and look to show others sitting there waiting that this is what you legally do when there is no train coming.
He wasn’t calling the railroad, cuz he was on the phone well before he got to the gates - in fact driving parallel to the tracks and was actually trespassing on rr property. Maybe that should have been my first clue.
I know police are humans, too, but should show by example!
That reminds me of where I used to work. The staff room overlooked a 3 rail grade crossing (great for train watching over the lunch hour!). I was on graveyard shift, so I took my lunch around 2am. I’m watching the crossing and the arms kept going down, staying there for a few minutes then went back up, then down again, and up.
It happened the entire hour I was there, truly weird. I thought they might have been doing some testing or something, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else in sight!?
I know this particular place has problems with weather or birds or whatever and it was explained on here how those things happen. It was daylight and I knew there was no train coming, since I sit there almost every weekend. But he never hesitated, didn’t really even look. Drove around a whole string of cars that watched him while they all stopped and waited.
Guess this goes back to the poor sheriff that drove around a whole string of stopped cars with lights and siren going and into the side of the old engineer’s work train - broad daylight!
That he wasn’t hurt makes it pretty funny, but really - I do hold politicians, clergypeople and the police officers to just a little higher standard than Mr & Mrs JQ Public!
In all likelihool nothing will happen to the individual. That’s too bad, because if I were the judge, I’d like to ask him how many people he has ticketed for doing that and base my fine accordingly[:(!].
FYI
Around here, if a school bus driver does that,(disregard RR crossing equipment) they lose their CDL licence, period. Trains in sight or no trains in sight. Empty or full. If that applied to everyone, maybe they would think twice before trying to beat the train.[V]
The answer to this is education. My department has been through an Operation Lifesaver program, so now we know better (the example of a locomotive hitting a car being like a car hitting a beercan struck home with us.) If I and my partner are on a call, lights and sirens going, we might- just might- blow through a gate, but not without looking. Incidentally, many cell phones allow us to clearly communicate with our dispatchers or supervisors when we are in radio dead spots… contrary to popular opinion, most of the time we are not calling for take out from Dunkin’ Donuts). Anyway, Lifesaver turned a few of us from being idle observers into railfans.
I’ve just now decided…volunteering for Operation Lifesaver would be a good thing to do after I retire. Nobody argues with the message they send, but it just doesn’t get out to people who need it (Metra just had an incident in which a 10-year-old boy was hit because he didn’t see the second train coming).
Ericthered has it pretty much right. Cell phones allow us to communicate with the dispatcher better. If an officer somewhere is on some really hot traffic, the dispatcher may tell all officers to hold their radio traffic unless it’s an emergency, so a cell phone is used to commicate until the channel is released. This may have been the case. As for driving around the crossing, no excuse unless it was an emergency. If so he should have been running lights and siren. Personally, if I’m running lights and siren, I’ll treat a rail crossing just like a major intersection. I may not completely stop, but you can bet I make sure I can make it safely across before I go through. Nothing like a couple knuckle through the door to ruin your day.
Well, the general feeling that they are above the law they enforce is one of the reasons why i dislike cops in general. Such is (while not universal) a prevalent attitude.
I used to work at a mall, and it was not uncommon to see an on duty officer pull his cruiser into a fire lane and park while he slips insideto do some last minute shopping for the holiday, then well sincehe was in there anyway, stop by the coffee bar to chat with his buddies.
I used to thrill on telling such cops to write themselves a ticket, especially when I’d note little
“extras” such as the wheel nearest the curb being in excess of 18" away from the curb.[4:-)]
What? Well heck yeah Mook, of course doing that made me popular, why do you think I did it in the first place?[^]
Well, the general feeling that they are above the law they enforce is one of the reasons why i dislike cops in general. Such is (while not universal) a prevalent attitude.
I used to work at a mall, and it was not uncommon to see an on duty officer pull his cruiser into a fire lane and park while he slips insideto do some last minute shopping for the holiday, then well sincehe was in there anyway, stop by the coffee bar to chat with his buddies.
I used to thrill on telling such cops to write themselves a ticket, especially when I’d note little
“extras” such as the wheel nearest the curb being in excess of 18" away from the curb.[4:-)]
Well, that’s obviously part of the illustration that he measured himself by an entirely different yardstick that the rest of us are supposed to use…
I think he started hating me the day I asked him in front of his buddy’s, if he’d like to buy a dime bag. (he REALLY thought he had me),…after he said “Surrree, is it good stuff?” I pulledf out a sandwich bag with $10 worth of Roosevelt dimes in it and said “You bet, the pure stuff too”
His cop buddies still razz him about that in the locker room, according to one cop I am actually friends with[:-,]
Doofus cop story… right out of our Lifesaver investigator’s notebook.
A conscientious police officer was escorting a funeral when he came to a crossing (ungated). He saw a train coming, so rather than interrupt the funeral procession, he got off his motorcycle, and put his hand up to stop the train.
Fortunately for him, the train was able to stop after a quarter mile of emergency brake application. No one was hurt on the ground or on the train.
The old Systems used to activate RR lights Were somewhat flawed, and can still be found in various places Still in operation.
I doubt they use the old insulated link system on Main lines, but if you live of a branch line or near a yard, this is what it could be:
An insulated link, with wires petruding from both sides are used to tell the location of the train. This sends a signal to the silver looking box known as the “Boite Logiciel” in Quebec, Heaven knows what that is in English.
The problem with this system, was that, It was never fool proof, and far from it. Teenagers with 10 Guage CU or AL wire could easily send this lights of in a tissy, and would drive the neighbors insane all night.
They were very easily “accidently” set off. That is why, newer Railraods use a different system, and I don’t know how the hell that works, You see the problem with links are:
There are a lot of Natural Conductors in this world, Certain trees falling on the lines Could cause The Electricity to flow through The links, Such as Oak is an extremely good conductor, where as a maple tree isn’t.