Grade Crossing failure procedures?

This may belong better in another forum, and if it does, my apologies.
This morning, I was crossing the tracks in my town of a Class I railroad. I'm reasonable familiar with the territory and operations (though I don't pretend I know even half as much as the employees) and most of the signals are approach-lit. This morning, the crossing was inactive, and as I was looking to my right when flying across the tracks, one of these signals right after a grade crossing was showing clear. I thought "neat, never caught that signal showing clear before, guess there's a train coming." Then I glance to my left and AH CRAP TRAIN!!! If it was moving at all, it was moving very slowly toward the cleared signal. While I couldn't possibly know if the crossing had failed and the crew was preparing to flag the crossing, it did get me thinking about what if the crossing had failed and that was the first train through? Do Class Is generally have some sort of centralized notification of crossing failure, or could a driver not paying attention and not hearing the horn, fly right into the path of a train? I'm not blaming the railroad at all here of course, but this morning did shake me a bit and I'll probably be a bit more cautious when approaching crossings...admittedly just for the next few days before lapsing right back into my old habits.

If you're around Atlanta on the CSX a lot of those Xings were re-done using 'predictors' instead of motion detection. Predictors 'look', see the speed and then predict gate down time. They went to using predictors because street traffic is held up less. I always preferred a motion detector cause if your track shunt was hit by lightning and was replaced you had to go thru a re-
calibration that was a pain in the a**.

I didn't do anything about answering your question, but I do know that the NS had a setup on some of their Xings around Birmingham that could notify their control center via radio of what was referred to as 'excessive gate down time'. Also I've seen ads in the trade publications for the same types of systems available.

MattW wrote:Do Class Is generally have some sort of centralized notification of crossing failure, or could a driver not paying attention and not hearing the horn, fly right into the path of a train? I'm not blaming the railroad at all here of course, but this morning did shake me a bit and I'll probably be a bit more cautious when approaching crossings...admittedly just for the next few days before lapsing right back into my old habits.

In my neck of the woods, UP dispatchers generally issue "XH" (crossing hazard) procedures to cover for common gate malfunctions (i.e., broken, won't stay down, don't go down all the way, etc.), where trains will proceed through the crossing at restricted speed, with plenty of horn action. Other situations where all warning devices at a crossing aren't working, dispatchers will then issue "XG" procedures, which requires all trains to stop first, then flag through the crossing at restricted speed...

CSX puts out 'Stop and Flag'. Train stops clear of the Xing. Conductor get down, red flag in hand, walks to the center of Xing, stops traffic, tells engineer to pull ahead, engine pulls ahead and stops,conductor mounts engine and trains leaves.

Awhile back I called the 800 number at a CSX crossing near me to report that the gates were down. When I mentioned that people would undoubtedly start driving around the gates the person I was speaking to said the first thing they do is call the dispatcher to put out a stop-and-flag order, even before they call a maintainer.

Once a Train Dispatcher is notified that there is a potential problem in regards to a grade crossing, whether it be a broken gate or malfuction, false activation, depending which railroad you are under, for example, on MBTA owned trackage rights, a NORAC rule Form D Line 12 will be issued to trains on that particular line alerting crews to stop and protect said grade crossing(s). Train must stop, a crew member get off, flag or use a fusee, guide the train thru and climb back on board. Rule 19b must also be sounded, no matter if the crossing is in a Quiet Zone, 19b must be sounded with the Line 12

I apologize for my lateness in thanking everyone for their responses. It does sound like once a grade crossing failure is known, safety wouldn't be compromised (as I expected) but it seems that knowledge of the failure is the hangup unless there's centralized notification.
Thanks everyone!

Although, I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that part of signal maintainer's job is to "check" crossing gate protection on some kind of frequency. Train crews tend to "notice" when crossing gates don't operate properly and report to the dispatcher when gates fail to work.

But, I'm not sure that there is an electronic system in place to alert the railroad when there is a crossing gate failure.

So, the bottom line is that: you're an idiot if you cross railroad tracks without looking out for an approaching train!

10more years wrote:Although, I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that part of signal maintainer's job is to "check" crossing gate protection on some kind of frequency. Train crews tend to "notice" when crossing gates don't operate properly and report to the dispatcher when gates fail to work.

But, I'm not sure that there is an electronic system in place to alert the railroad when there is a crossing gate failure.

So, the bottom line is that: you're an idiot if you cross railroad tracks without looking out for an approaching train!

A Maintainer has his/her 30, 60, and 90 day checks, just like the switch tests. Also since they've had systems offered by different companies that notify a central control center electronically,
I've wondered, for years, why the railroads didn't buy into it instead of relying on the public to call in Xing trouble.

Freddy wrote:[quote="1I've wondered, for years, why the railroads didn't buy into it instead of relying on the public to call in Xing trouble.

How do you know they haven't installed it? They leave the signs with the telephone number to call because automated systems have been known to fail.

Adirondacker wrote:

Freddy wrote:[quote="1I've wondered, for years, why the railroads didn't buy into it instead of relying on the public to call in Xing trouble.

How do you know they haven't installed it? They leave the signs with the telephone number to call because automated systems have been known to fail.

I know the NS had some on a few Xings outside their yard in Birmingham Al. If CSX has then none of the guys I know have mentioned it and I haven't seen any radio antenna or phone lines
running into bungalows at new installations.

Freddy wrote: I haven't seen any radio antenna or phone lines
running into bungalows at new installations.

Assuming they use telephone lines or the railroad's radio frequencies. It could have a 4G cell phone in it that the computers in the bungalow use to connect to the computers at the control center. Or when they called the telephone company and asked for a telephone line to be installed the telephone company decided to provision as a "rural" telephone line using the power line as the telephone circuit.

Just another comment on the original post: Could be that the train had stopped at that location for any number of reasons: train meet, lunch, held for track inspection or work authority and had just been cleared to leave. The train could have been stopped (the post was not sure if the train was mioving or not) or the train may have been easing up to the crossing to activate the gates. We don't know how far from the crossing the train was.

10more years wrote:Although, I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that part of signal maintainer's job is to "check" crossing gate protection on some kind of frequency. Train crews tend to "notice" when crossing gates don't operate properly and report to the dispatcher when gates fail to work.

But, I'm not sure that there is an electronic system in place to alert the railroad when there is a crossing gate failure.

So, the bottom line is that: you're an idiot if you cross railroad tracks without looking out for an approaching train!

There is a default on crossing gates and when there not working correctly they in general are supposed to drop and stay that way. Older signals used to run on batteries during power outages and so forth. The newer ones run on a radio frequency and can be temperamental according to a buddy of mine who was a former signals guy for CSX.

If the gates are not working the crews have to stop there train and then flag the crossing until the gates are fixed.

an old Conrail time table that I have reports that if operating on Rusty Track the crews shall not proceed at a speed faster than 5 mph and are to stop and wait 60 seconds until determined that the gates and signals are operating correctly before advancing.