Police say driver will not be cited because there are no signs indicating a grade at crossing...

Does that really work? I've heard rumours that connecting the 2 rails together with a metal object will indicate a track problem. Never put any stock into it though.

 

when I am hirailing my shunts sometimes bring down the arms and sometimes I have to wait at the crossing for them to come down,I have looked at the cat screen and it didn't show the truck until I am stopped,it just depends how good your shunts are,I have come across people putting wire across the tracks to shunt but it didn't work.

 

Yep it works, one guy I know was down some signal work, and they was putting stop lights up next to tracks, and was running wire across poles that were on opposite sides of track and it sagged and hit the tracks, scared them pretty good since the 2 that had a hold of the wire were in bucket trucks, and that's when the railroad employee explained that to them. It will also put the gates down, they had stories of kids that would bury a wire just down the track from crossings and it would touch the underside of the tracks, so the railroad employees wouldn't be able to find it bc they couldn't see it.

 

The results are in.....

I am not smarter than a 5th grader.

 

Those rails carry about a volt or two, enough to trip the battery relay box when a train shows up within it's block of signalling for crossing gate and ABS signal purposes. Toss a length of chain down on the rail at the crossing will usually throw a red in anything coming. Anything that makes a red light or flag, flare etc is also sufficient to get a train stopped provided you walk down track a few hundred feet to buy it time to stop.

Rail safety is no joke, but I wonder sometimes that I probably would have been involved in it if it was not for trucking. There is a life leak on Donner Pass clearing snow with the old F boosters from the 50's in addition to modern units video that is pretty good. It's probably page two or three now.

 

I worked construction for many years, one job we were next to a live rail, we were not allowed to wear anything red. I had a red hardhat at the time, had to put on a white one. Every day we were out there they had a rail guy on the job on standby to let us know if a train was coming.

When the rail guy told us the train was coming, we'd have to stop work and swing our crane boom away from the tracks.

 

At least you didn't end up like these guys:

 

Come on, that had to be a no truck route. I'm going to give the driver a break on this. He MUST have slammed on the brakes but probably going to fast to get it woahed up.