Does anyone know : if a crossing had no markings on it, then it is totally inactive for sure, right? It is not even a car (auto) length away (parallel) from a marked crossing with lights, gates, etc. I do look as I go near this but I do wonder. Why don’t they take up the tracks if they are no longer in use? Thanks in advance for your answers.
???
You sorta-kinda need to tell us more.
Crossing may be private or company use - neither requires markings in many places. Could be a ped x-ing on the backside of a gate or a hi-rail setoff.
Could be a bootleg crossing (put there w/o railroad permission). They still happen. Just saw a shortline read the riot act to one such cheat in KS. If so, the railroad will get rid of it if they’re smart. Any crossing of an active track is supposed to have a DOT # associated with it, if there isn’t the railroad will make it gone or force somebody to be re$pon$ible for it.
Tracks often are not retired for contractual, budget or convenience reasons. Renewing or removing crossings often requires road closure, something many balk at. Unless you have the engineering or operating documentation from a railroad, DO NOT assume the track is out of service, embargoed or abandoned. Initial sentence assumption scares me.
Are there even any “crossbucks” = “RAIL-ROAD CROSSING” signs for the possibly inactive crossing, by itself ? Does that track join the main/ protected track anyplace nearby ? - Paul North.
It’s right near a lumberyard, I believe. I always worry a bit that there will be a car rolling around there some place. As I said, I do try to be careful in that area. It is on a well-traveled road.
Hi, Paul. We were writing at the same time. No, there are no cross bucks for the possibly inactive crossing. As for joining into the main track, I can’t tell. I haven’t seen that it does but it’s hard to really tell.
for sure? Nope. I know of crossings that are unmarked that cross busy highways. They are industrial sidings, and the crew flags the train across. The customer might not use it, or he may. Ever see any lumber cars sitting in there? If you could get a close look at the tracks, you can usually tell if it has been used recently or not. Are the flangeways present? Or are they filled to the railhead in dirt? Are there pieces of lumber and other junk laying on the rails?
Can you give us the coordinates of this crossing so that we can look at it on google earth?
I’m sorry; I’m not very tech savvy at all, so please bear with me. I looked them up and they’re listed as:
-77.632272, 43.060287,0
Pls let me know if you need even more info. Thanks.
Check your coordinates, there shoudln’t be a comma in the second number, and when you remove it you get someplace in antarctica.
Oops, very sorry; told you I’m a newbie at this. How about you do a reverse lookup like I did/tried to?
It’s at Matthews & Fields Lumber Co
1230 Lehigh Station Rd
Henrietta NY 14467
The address is fine. You can clearly see the unmarked crossing in street view. May be unused, maybe not, depends on whether they unload cars in the yard north, but you can see it is connected to the mainline.
Thanks for the info.
In fact, I would now bet to say that it is used, because if you look at that main track, it ends soon south after that shipper, so without that shipper those tracks may have all been torn up in the first place.
Then how do they get away with no markings, warnings, or am I missing something here?
That is the yard. The crossing is right near there.
I hope it is generally understood I am not trying to make waves or cause trouble. I’m just wondering if it’s still active because if it is, I’ll be even more careful than I already am. That’s all. Thanks.
How rusty are the rails? Do they look like they’ve been used lately? Run your fingers over the rail and see if a bunch of rust comes off. If it does, chances are they haven’t been used in a while.
Hhmm…interesting; OK. I don’t want to trespass though. It’s under LA&L, I think, so I wonder if there is a way to see if they are still active on there. I think that pic posted was from 2008. It’s just something I think about every time I go over the crossing. I usually just stop and look anyway.
Any train traversing that rail would be just one or two cars being pushed by a locomotive with a flagman on the end of the car and possibly one on the ground with a “STOP” sign on a pole, and they would not be moving very fast (~~3 MPH?). No worries about a train suddenly appearing on that track without lots of warning to drivers or its ability to stop in just a few feet if a driver were to miss or ignore the flagman.
Your coordinates were backwards - I swapped them and it took me right there.
While I can’t speak to the legal ramifications of the absence of any signage, if the siding is still used it’s definitely a stop and flag. It’s interesting to note that the highway people still maintain the stop lines for that crossing.
Caution is, of course, always advised, but I’d opine that you won’t see any railroad equipment crossing the road there without a human out there telling you to stop.
At the risk of sounding sarcastic, which I’m not intending this to be, why don’t you just call the lumberyard and ask them? “Hi, I drive by your yard all the time, and see that you have railroad tracks leading into your yard. I’m curious. Do you still get lumber in by train?”
At our former location, we had an old siding that was used for the first 75 or so years of its existence, then went idle. Someone called one day and asked about the tracks. I happened to answer the call, and we had a good chat about it. Ironically, the very next week, the railroad pushed a bad order car into the siding for about a week. That was probably the first time in 20 years a car had been on the siding.
-Norris, Lumberyard guy in S.D.