Apply Brakes Before Sounding Horn?

(Inspired by the thread "hits car carrier" of approximately the same date in the Brightline forum)

Do (or should) engineers prepare to stop before sounding additional blasts (over and above the long-long-short-long for grade crossing) on the horn when seeing a stationary obstruction on the tracks up ahead?

In the Brightline crash, and other crashes I have seen on Youtube,, a truck was stalled for awhile on the grade crossing and therefore could be seen well in advance by the engineer, unless the train was rounding a bend.

Related: Could someone stuck on the tracks get a train to stop by taking a 5 or so foot wire, gloves and paperweights, and bridging (shorting) the two running rails? The intent is to cause block signals to go red. and a train could be stopped in many cases if it was not too close. (It is still necessary to run away from the track.)

Re attempting to short tracks: its been done, is probably illegal, and if done wrong could just make things worse.

Not as easy as you think. At 60mph the train is more than a mile away & requires more than a mile to stop. Need more info on the kinds of speeds Brightline operates at. Probably need a warning horn at each crossing where something obstructs it.

When there is an obstruction not sure how quickly dispatch can contact engineer. This was also true in the Ohio derailment. Shorting track may take too much time & not work. Mostly Brightline or any other RR needs you to be off the track 20 seconds before train comes. For Brightline maybe this needs to be 30 seconds or more.

As for apply brakes before sounding horn this may have to be done at every crossing. At speed & distance may not hear horn, may see nothing & may already be too late to stop.

It could work, but there are factors to consider. First, if the approaching train is already by the last block signal, then it will do no good to shunt the rails. Maybe in cab signal territory it will downgrade to no code restricting signal. This might put the train in penalty brake, which would slow the train at a service rate. Even if the last signal was an absolute, and the rail was shunted before passing it, the rules call for stopping with good train handling. This has happened to me when a signal drops either in my face, or it has dropped after I’d gone by the last signal, and it indicated that I should be expecting a favorable signal at the next block.

The best way to save the day is to call the emergency number on the little blue sign on the crossing signal. The second way would be if one knew which direction the train was approaching from. If there was time someone could give the engineer a stop motion. Unfortunately not many of the public know how.

Disney Guy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 7:25 am In the Brightline crash, and other crashes I have seen on Youtube,, a truck was stalled for awhile on the grade crossing and therefore could be seen well in advance by the engineer, unless the train was rounding a bend.

A basic fact is that a train traveling at a commercial speed--be it a coal drag at 50 mph or a passenger hotshot at 79--cannot stop within sighting distance of an obstruction. If you're stuck on a crossing and can see an oncoming train the engineer can see you, and if the engineer can see you the train is going to hit you unless you get out of the vehicle before the train reaches the crossing. As Engineer Spike points out above, the best thing to do is get out immediately and call the number on the blue plate.

I was out walking one day and noticed that the gates were down at a crossing with no train in sight and cars driving around the gates, so I called the number on the sign. I gave the person who answered the crossing number shown on the sign and suggested having the dispatcher issue a stop-and-protect order, and he replied that it's the first thing they do--they notify the dispatcher before they call the signal department to report the defect.