That remarkable mess of nuts and bolts brought to mind a few questions about diamonds:
Since there are overlapping railroad jurisdictions at a diamond, like Joliet, how is maintenance divided up and shared? Are there strict rules? At Joliet, could a Santa Fe worker tighten a bolt on a piece of Rock Island rail, or did that kind of thing require permission?
Are there sometimes historical issues that govern maintenance? For instance, does the railroad that came later have to pay for all the maintenance?
Does it sometimes happen that the MOW department of one road gets annoyed with MOW of another road for not doing their share of the up-keep? I can imagine that kind of thing happening.
Anyway, I was just curious about the practices and politics of diamond maintenance.
(PS. Did anyone notice the Trains Magazine content in that photo?)
Read any railroad history book and you’d find out that while each diamond was an individual and seperate case most often the new railroad would be responsible for the cost of building or installing and maybe even the maintaining and operation. However there are exceptions where the existing railroad is a main line and may control the diamond. The operator in control of the diamond may work for the exisiting railroad but his pay is covered by the new one; it may bounce back and forth between the two roads month by month or year by year. Each diamond has its own agreement between or among the parties involved and won’t be the same as the next one or the last one. Again, best read the general histories of railroads or for specifics, the history of your favorite railroad. Answers there are more complete and more accurate than you’ll find here.
Or maybe not - since there’s already a “special purpose entity” set-up to do much that kind of thing, independent of the parents, which thereby precludes most of the ad hoc decisions, disputes, and delays for such maintenance ‘stepchildren’ that each wants the other one to be responsible for . . .
Usual rule is that the “junior” (later) road pays for the installation and all subsequent operating and maintenance costs. However, that is subject to modification or variation by the local “Joint Facilities Agreement”, which can also specify which one actually furnishes the personnel and materials, reimbursement procedures, etc.
Differening or inadequate maintenance standards are one reason to do that, as you suspect. If I were representing the senior railroad, I’d want the contractual right or option (but not the duty) to perform - or at least control - the maintenance quality, even if (or especially if) the other RR has to pay for it anyway. The worst of that problem has gone away with the inplementation of the FRA Track Safety Standards, and the better economic conditions in the industry generally.
Pretty sure that RI would have been the senior road through here, but, though I know I’ve been there when work was being done in the vicinity, I didn’t pay attention to whose name was on the trucks. I would think that since a Union Depot company had been set up (that’s where UD Tower gets its name, obviously), they would be responsible for the maintenance.
This crossing originally had 16 diamonds (four tracks each way). By the time this picture was taken the RI tracks were reduced to three (that’s as many as I remember ever having seen firsthand). Now there’s just the one Metra/CRL/CSXT/IAIS track crossing the four other tracks.