Recently in my paper they did a story on cars crosing grades while a train was coming. This is in Akron ohio(rubber city) 30+ cars at one location. Well I decided to see why. Well i drove they down and saw the gate were talking s on about. It’s on a heavily traveled four lane road. What surprised me was there were no gates, just crossing bucks and lights. I looked around and drove past it a couple times. Because of the many store signs littering the road the signal were hard to find. Then I noticed that on a rural two lane road had gates on it. then a block over just crossbucks at the bottom of a dip, hard to see.
So my question is who decides on what style of signals is used at a crossing. Why the inconsistencies? The line in question is the wheeling and lake erie a shortline. The only other railroad around is csx and they have gates at all their crossings.
Andy
Andy ,Mac is correct.the state of ohio decides.but dont always trust gates.Plese stop look and listen. Matt and i found a pair of malfunctioning gates on the way home yesterday.Stopped at the Defiance Trainmasters office and reported it.
stay safe
joe
The Question is?
What the hell is the point of having grade crossing gates when drivers just go around them anyway…it’s pointless.I see this all the time.If he or she just can’t wait just a few minutes then that person should pay the dearest price.BNSFfan.
is this going to turn into another M&M-vers-rails topic agin? i wonder if M&M will come out of the woodwork to spead thier “the railroads are evil…and trains lay in wait to pounce at rail road crossings on the poor unsuspecting public that is just minding its own biz …by driving around the gates and ingoring the flashing red lights”…
csx engineer
I saw this thing on TV once that talked about that. They were talking about gates thatwent across the entire road and went up and down like a garage door. they were able to take the impact of a car upto like 50 mph and still keep the car from going through the gate so the train wont hit the car.
Most people don’t drive around gates, just a few. And of course some of those few get wacked by a train that’s doing its job, running at the appropriate speed, with a train crew that’s trying to complete their assigned run. Yet, some “liberalized bleeding hearts” want to blame the railroads and cry “lawsuit”.
The majority of American and Canadian citizens still use common sense though, and respect the gates as they know that locomotives don’t discriminate as they are equal opportunity smashers of anything in their way.