A strange question, while travelling around Britain a thousand years ago (1965) and travelling by train very, very, very cheap too, also behind steam, (hey, they had 3 cylinder locomotives) I noticed at grade crossings were gates and sometimes gatemen, in their little sheds, wow, what kind of a job must that have been to sit out in the middle of the country and lower the gate when a train approached, not too much to stretch the mind there eh? Question: did every road crossing in Britain have a crossing gate or a gate man or an automatic gate?? they seemed to be everywhere.
no all crossings are not manned or automatic we have unmanned level crossings on farm land where the line bisects the land they are meant to phone up the local box for permotion but judging by some of the accidents lately some don’t. as far as the railway crossing the public highway all crossings are barriered either half or full most are unmanned nowadays but ther are still a few crossingt keepers left. also some are controlled by the local signal box (see ratio kit for details) hope this helps
Right here we go are you sitting comfortably? I’m a signalman for Network Rail which owns all the track in the UK. I’ll try to simplify it.
- We still have Manual gates operated by a Crossing keepers or Signalmen but they are getting rarer, usually they survive because it’s too expensive to justify putting in automatic barriers.
- There are CCTV and locally monitored (within view of the signalbox) barriers controlled by the signaller by push button or in a few cases a big mechanical wheel. These have full barriers blocking the whole road and flashing lights.
- Automatic Half Barriers or AHB are operated by the approach of a train and have 2 barriers only blocking the side of the road on which cars approach and flashing lights. These are the type often abused by drivers going round the half barriers and then trying to blame the railway when they get hit! They don’t jump lights at road junctions but seem to ignore them and the barriers if it’s a rail crossing.
- Occupation or accommodation crossings, which provide access between farmers fields or access to a property, are gated with normal field gates and a warning to ring the signalbox if they are taking a slow moving or large vehicle across, Horse riders will also ring in. The Signalman will then tell the user if it is safe to cross and request a call back to ensure the line is clear again, or trains will be have to be cautioned.
http://www.tillyweb.biz/index.htm there are some pics on this site by John Tilly who works for Her Majestys Railway Inspectorate.
Just for interest we have about 7 AHB’s and another 20 Ooccupation and accommodation crossings on our patch,
Hope this answers some of your questions[:D]
Growing up in the UK as a kid I remember the swinging hinged gates with the red disk in the middle, rather than the lever style barriers of today. When did these old style gates get phased out?
At least into 1999, when I left, the crossing gates on the High Street in Lincoln were controlled by a person in the tower next to the crossing. You could see him get up, walk over and pull a lever (I think, he was up above street level, and it has been a while.)
Thanks for the replies, I still have a quandry, according to your replies, excluding farm crossings and the like, does that mean that every road that crosses railway tracks in Britain has some type of gate or barrier, either automatic or manual?? that must mean many hundreds of thousands of these all over Britain, how could you possibly even maintain them? here in Canada, only major highways and often used roads and many roads in cities and towns have crossing systems, all others just have warning signs posted that a railway crossing is ahead, maybe I’m missing out something here. thanks.
For all intents and purposes, every crossing in the UK requires some form of gate protection.
The exception was (is?) on some private lines and narrow gauge lines, all with overall speed limits of 25 MPH or less and much less, 10 MPH (?) over the crossing, which had (has) to be flagged IIRC.
And yes, every single mile of track in the UK requires some form of fencing, nence the need for gates.
Roger is right about all main line railway crossings being gated and lineside fenced. The Permanent way track gangs and our MOM’s (mobile operations managers) check all the fencing and gates as they patrol their area. The lightweight units that form the majority of passenger services and the high speed of our passenger lines don’t mix well with cows and sheep, and we have a lot of cows in a small country!
Another fascinating fact for you we don’t send staff to remove deer seen on the track, deer are classed as flying animals by the railway due to their ability to leap the fences
He rightly says the only exceptions are a few low speed private railways and the romney hythe and dymchurch, 15 inch line, has had two drivers killed by cars at their ungated crossings in the last three years, in both cases the railway lights were in perfect working order.
Again, great answers, now with all those crossings, and I mean ALL, I’m moving to Britain, with all those crossings it must mean that 3/4 of the population must either work for the railways as crossing guards or manufacture crossing equipment, should be able to get a job in those fields, right?Oh, I guess I could also install fences along every mile of railway line in Britain, yikes, just how many miles of railway lines are in Britain?
In 1965, the majority of crossings on BR would have been manually operated by the crossing keeper, either by turning a huge wheel like a ship’s wheel in an adjacent signalbox (control tower), or by pushing the gate, until they locked into a ‘shoe’ . I remember seeing a crossing gate being demolished by a steam hauled freight train in around 1958 when the gate had failed to engage in the shoe. The signalman had thrown the signal back to danger when he realised that the gate wasn’t in place, but it was too late. Even though the gate timbers were about 9" square, the train smashed it to match wood without derailing. After that the signalman (or ‘Bobby’ , as we called them - they were originally policemen, also known as Bobbies, after the man who originated the British police force, Sir Robert Peel) would shake his fist at me and shout 'Go away ! ’ or words to that effect. I think he was worried that he may lose his job if I made a witness statement !. A crossing at the little Wel***own of Caersws still has gates that are pushed open and shut by a crossing keeper, who then returns to his box to manually operate the levers to semaphore signals protecting the crossing.
According to the Network Rail website (the people responsible for track and infrastructure) there are around 21’000 miles of track. Fencing this isn’t really a problem for them - most fences seem to be maintained by the people who own the land alongside the tracks.
Add on 253 miles for London Underground of which 55% is above ground and requiring fences. The other 45% is in tunnels below street level.
Ian
It is my understanding that the railway, not the landowner, is responsible for maintaining the lineside fencing in the UK. If a cow happens to stray onto the line through a broken fence, and gets killed, the farmer is entitled to claim compensation from the railway. A tale I heard a couple of years ago was that a track gang digging in the cess (the drainage channel alongside the ballast) near Newtown, Mid Wales, came across the skeleton of a cow. It was beleived that the cow had been buried by a previous gang , probably on the order of the gaffer, to fool the farmer into thinking that his cow had been stolen!
One thing about crossing signals and barriers in the UK, if you want to put in a new crossing with barriers like the one on Strand road in Preston linking Ribble Steam railway / Ribble Rail to the network it costs an absolute fortune, well into six figures or more, it also took the railway around three years to get past the planning and construction work.
this is the half barrier crossing which is controlled by a Ribble Rail worker
