The old engineer used to tell me that he would travel the great plains and watch cars that would parallel the tracks, going down the highway at a great speed. He would tell his fireman to watch the car, cuz they were going to try to beat the train to the crossing. He was never wrong. Sometimes the driver of the car was…
I commute on METRA (UP Northwest Line), and I think that it has an excellent safety record, given the number of people that use it every day. I see hundreds of people getting off the train at busy stations such as Barrington or Arlington Heights, and running in every direction to get to a bus, a ride, or their own parked cars, and I am always amazed that more people don’t get hurt or killed. People do not think. Yesterday, I noticed that trains were slowing and not entering stations where an opposite-direction train was standing or departing, and I think that this is a good practice, although it may play havoc with the timetable. In any event, it should help save lives where people are departing a train, and running around its end to get to the other side of the tracks.
The CNW had a timetable rule that prohibited a train from entering a station if another train was occupying said station. In the morning eastbound trains had priority at a station, and in the evening (after 1200) westbound trains had rights. It even got more interesting in the triple-track areas (Barrington to Chicago). Most trains on the center track were “express” trains that the “locals” had to lay back for, even the one’s going in the same direction. This even applied to freight trains. Quite a sensation on an express zipping through a crowded platform full of people waiting to board the local that was due to stop two minutes after your passage. All the commuters scrambling acrosss the tracks, thinking the express was the local they were waiting for…
Not too difficult to do nowadays with radios on all trains, but in the “good old days” we would communicate with sequenced flashes of the headlight.
When running a freight train in suburban territory (before radios), an engineer had to be able to time the passage of his train through a station before or after a passenger train was due. Quite a feat sometimes, considering that the stations are sometimes only a mile or two apart (a real pain in the tush, actually).
Jim, those rules are still there, in UP’s special instructions book. It looks to me like every possible occurrence is pretty well covered. I know from scanner talk that freights and opposing scoots are always inquiring about the location of the scoot when they get close to the schedule time for meeting it, so they can comply with all of the rules.
I worked a scoot assignment only once. In those days, the scoots were on a different channel from the freights, and we were constantly being told by the dispatcher to “switch to Channel 1 and let no. ___ know where you are.” Having everyone on the same channel is a definite improvement in this case.
And Jim…congratulations on the third star!
Wow! I didn’t notice. Thanks.[:D]
Something else is missing from these discussions and it is the almost total lack of enforcement activities by many of the suburban police departments. It’s relatively easy to get ticket for driving 5 miles over the speed limit in most of these towns but people rarely, if ever, get tickets for walking or driving around crossing gates or trespassing on railroad property. It is simply more financially lucrative for these police departments to spend their time writing traffic tickets than policing grade crossings. Police departments have an obligation to enforce ALL the laws not just the ones they prefer to enforce.
I heared today (3/25/04) that a Metra train hit and killed someone.
Yep, sure did, he was a 49 year old Mexican imigrant taking a short cut across the tracks of the UP West Line (CNW) to go to work at a printing plant. Yet another example of ignorance of consequences (or was it sheet stupidity) costing somebody his own life (not to mention the mental anguish of the Metra engineer).
Correction: It was the MILW west line, near Itasca, according to a news report quoted on the UTU web site. Both victim and engineer’s visibility was obscured by a curve in the tracks, and noise may have been muffled by air traffic from O’Hare.
I just can’t see how you can’t hear or see a train comming down the tracks
I can attest to the fact that trains CAN sneak up on you. Especially when coasting along in idle, and with the wind blowing from you to the train. And this is from someone that is ALWAYS looking for the train.