Oh, I think there is obviously a political agenda behind this. When was the last time that a train engineer was prosecuted for not yielding to a motorist at a grade crossing?
You are conflating Train with Light Rail. They both operate on rails, that is their only likeness. To my knowledge, Light Rail motormen are not required to have at FRA issued Engineers card. To my knowledge Light Rail motormen must possess a valid drivers license.
Engineers on RAILROAD trains are not required to have a valid drivers license, just their valid FRA Engineers Card.
Zug and Jeff can explain in more detail.
Light rails are under FTA (Fed. Transit Admin.), and not FRA, as far as I know. What they need to operate a LRV? I haven’t a clue.
I found mine in a CrackerJack Box!
“So, to instantly charge the engineer with felony manslaughter, with no time spent for an investigation or explanation of his negligence, seems way over the top. It seems spiteful”.
No “instant charge”. The accident was over a year ago. I would have to think that during that time there was a clear investigation.
google street view:
I see fixed signals on either side of the crossing. Do they have any “linkage” to the crossing protection? (that is, in the event of a crossing apparatus failure, would that drop the signals to a more restrictive indication?)
The crossing flashers seem to be mounted high up, cannot see if they have those small white “side lights” as ground-mounted flashers would have.
If this were “heavy rail” (REAL railroad), the union would be on top of this right away. But not so sure about transit-related union representation.
Thanks for clarifying that. I did not realize that the crash happed a year ago. So I agree that there was probably nothing hasty about the decision to blame the engineer. The story covers the odd twist of first blaming the victim, and then realizing that was an investigative error. So they changed their conclusion to find that the engineer caused the collision by his extreme negligence. But I have yet to find any explanation of what constituted that negligence. So, overall, I cannot conceive of any circumstances that are likely to have placed the blame on the engineer.
From what I have read, I conclude that the signals failed to be operating at the moment of the crash, but there is no indication of how the signals functioned during their total activation cycle as the train approached the crossing. From the news, I must conclude that the victim was unable to see any signal activation.
Possibly the enginee
There are “ground level” flashers on both sides of the track. All of them have the side lights. AFAIK, all such signal heads are the same in that respect, no matter the manufacturer.
It might be worth noting, however, that because of the angle of the mounting of the heads, some of those “portholes” would not be visible to an oncoming train. This is because the main light is aimed at oncoming vehicle traffic.
I don’t know what the intended purpose of the convex mirrors is - ie, are they to provide visibility of trains for motorists, or vice versa.
This post/sale on EBay has some nice illustrations: https://www.ebay.com/itm/175351501794
I have nothing to do with the vendor - this is just for illustration. Note that there are “portholes” on both sides of the fixture. Western Cullen Hayes is a well-known purveyor of such equipment.
There appears to be a white light on the green signal box.
I do not see a connection to commercial power, but it may be fed some other way. There are a lot of solar panels as well.
Many crossing boxes have a light seen through a “port hole” that indicates that the crossing has power. Also note the battery box adjacent to the signal box. It may or may not be active.
Can’t really see enough of the poles to determine if a feed is running down the pole.
There is also something running down the ROW between the tracks. An on-the-ground version of a code line? Could be power there, just as there was on lineside poles at one time.
One can discern that the crossing warning lights are at a angle to the tracks. Where the port to view if the lights are flashing may not be easily viewable by an operator on either track.
I wonder why they installed the mirrors.
My first thought was a negative feeder, but could well be something else.
Advances in power electronics have come to the point where the crossing signals could easily be powered from the 600VDC overhead, with the configuration being a galvanically isolated DC/DC converter keeping a battery charged, though the crossing was mst likely built before the appropriate DC/DC converters were available.
The road crossing IS NOT perpendicular to the tracks - it crosses the tracks at what I would estimate at a 15 degree angle. If one considers the tracks run in a N-S direction the road is crossing the tracks at about a WSW to ENE direction. That I can find, we have no idea of the direction either of the vehicles involved were moving at the time of the incident.
The car and the train both ended up north of the crossing, based on news images and satellite images.
Without knowing the victim’s intended route, including where he was coming from, it’s hard to know which way he may have been travelling. The school is near downtown Baltimore and there appear to be several routes he could have taken to get there.
From that we can deduce that the Light Rail train was headed geographically North. IF and I repeat IF, the vehicle was headed nominally Eastward over the crossing the driver would have been contending with the morning Sun being low on the horizon into his face at the time of the incident. The light rail train would have had the Sun coming from his right front. The auto driver likely would not have been able to see anything from the mirrors at the crossing as he would have been looking into the sun.
If the automotive vehicle was headed Westward, he should have had direct visual contact with the Northward light rail.
According to the news, the signals were not activated when the driver approached. A lot of people rely on the signals and thus do not look for trains.
This is not an uncommon situation, even on heavily used railroad lines. Many grade crossings in urban areas have poor sight lines for motorists due to structures along the street so it can be difficult to slow down to look before crossing the tracks.