I’m a retired expat living in Trieste, Italy, and a question in my mind has come up that perplexes me. The recent car-train collision on Metro North brought this into focus for me, so I’m hoping that someone out there has an answer. This type of collision is very rare around here and my frequent train trips in NW Italy reinforce this. Most highway-rail crossings are grade separated, but those that are not have what appears to be a fairly large diameter steel pipe, like a well casing, that blocks the entire road from shoulder to shoulder.
My question is this, how do they prevent cars from getting trapped between gates? I realize that most of these crossings, if not all of the ones I’ve seen, do not have a parallel highway to muck things up and back up traffic across the racks like in the US, but it seems to me that getting trapped between gates could happen. Any ideas?
I’m not familiar with current practice in Europe, but the last time I was stationed in Germany all the grade crossings had a guard on duty who controlled the signals and gates. Each had a timetable they went by to turn on the signals and lower the gates, and trains were never late.
That was also the practice in many locations the U.S. until after WW2, when automated signals began to replace manned crossings.
My hunch? It has less to do with the gates or type of gates than with the attitudes of the drivers. It is unfortunate but two (maybe three) generations of drivers in the US became very accustomed to there being very few trains, that those they did see were laughably slow due to poorly maintained track, and passenger trains were few and far between. Result: no fear/respect for railroad crossings as a danger. Some very bad habits have become ingrained as a result.
It will be interesting to see the results as they rehab the UP tracks that go past the Illinois Railway Museum so that passenger service can be returned to Rockford IL. While the UP has improved the track and the track speeds a bit since the last days of the C&NW, many drivers in those rural areas have become accustomed to having lots of time between when you see a headlight or hear a horn and when a train finally makes it to the crossing. That will be changing, soon, and I predict a period of adjustment for the drivers (and train crews for that matter).
Reaching back in memory:[While investigating an incident in Gainesville,Ga. between a crossing on a ‘mainline’ highway/railroad gradecrossing there, and the needs of a situation in which a tractor/trailer truck needed to back to a loading dock, temporarily,blocking that crossing on a busy double tracked line to manoever to the dock position. Track Speed on the adjacent line was at 60(?) mph, an approaching train crew whose sight d
Largely automated for some years in Germany. At gated crossings, theg ates lower well before the train arrives, I believe longer than in US. But since the gates are much heavier duty and four-quadrant, trying to “beat the train” is a pretty rare occurence, even by the cognitively challenged types.
I stumbled across this thead while searching for something else, and at least in the UK the answer for four-quadrant gates is obvious, as this video shows - the gate on the far side of the crossing (the exit gate) starts coming down after the entrance gate is nearly fully down. The driver would need to be completely inattentive or wasted to get trapped between the two, in which they probably would get hit in any case.
Wow - that guy could give someone motion sickness…
I kinda like the idea of the second gate being delayed, but not by too much. It looks like there’s enough time to allow someone to avoid getting trapped (as mentioned), but is soon enough to deter someone from driving around the gates, a common practice.
Back in my dim and distant youth, four-quadrant gates were the norm at crossings with manually operated gates, with the second pair lowered after the first pair was completely lowered. They were raised in reverse order.