Crossing Gate Question

Those railroads (just incase anyone's losing track of the conversation the LIRR does NOT do this) probably have rules to screw the motorist and have the gates remain down. Why should they care that a car's stuck there? Besides anything else is a potential liability.

drumz0rz wrote:Those railroads (just incase anyone's losing track of the conversation the LIRR does NOT do this) probably have rules to screw the motorist and have the gates remain down. Why should they care that a car's stuck there? Besides anything else is a potential liability.

This is ridiculous, no railroad wants to deliberitly wants to "screw the motorist". There are liability issues if the gates are
left down or a crossing is blocked for an excessive period of time.
As I stated earlier both railroads in South Florida have means for insuring that the gates do not remain down for an excessive period of time before the train actually passes over the crossing.
On the Florida East Coast the mainline crossings
have predictors/motion sensors on them and these devices will automatically sense the train speed and the gates do not go
down until it is necessary. In some places the Florida East Coast has radio activated crossings as explained below for
Tri-Rail.
On Tri-Rail which has over 60 total train movements each weekday the crossings that are close to train stations are raised
and lowered from the locomotive radio by use of the keypad by the engineer in either the locomotive or cab control car.
Maybe the LIRR and some of the other railroads need to catch up with progress, it is time consuming for the conductor to
have to walk to a box, use a key to lower the gates, it would be far safer and faster to have the engineer simply push a
couple of buttons on the radio to activate the gates and probably safer too.
Instructions and codes for all of the above crossings are in the employee timetables for the two lines.
Noel Weaver

The Long Island has a hard enough time keeping the contacts on the key mechanism working.

Perhaps some sort of radio control is in the future, but remember that the radio systems too are virtually unchanged since they were installed in '68.

LongIslandTool wrote:The Long Island has a hard enough time keeping the contacts on the key mechanism working.

Perhaps some sort of radio control is in the future, but remember that the radio systems too are virtually unchanged since they were installed in '68.

My goodness, it is hard to believe that the radios came in 1968. This is just before we got them on the New York end of the
New Haven which began with the Penn Central takeover on January 1, 1969.
It is simply amazing the changes that taken place in the use of radio in the railroad industry during the past few years.
I can recall the days when we had one or two channel radios and that was it, not the multi channel panels that are common
today just about everywhere.
I can remember riding a fantrip from Boston to Bangor, Maine back in the late 70's or very early 80's when at Portland they
had to change out the radio on the engine to a Maine Central radio.
Back in the Penn Central days I would carry a scanner with me as sometimes we had no way to know just what channel the
engine radio would be working on. This was also true the first year or two of Conrail when we had engines from all over
the place, most of the radios had a lable on them as to the channel but some did not, again I would check out the radio on
the scanner to make sure we were on the right channel to hear the dispatcher and other trains.
Now today we even have ATCS to use to our benefit which is an offshoot of the radio system.
Noel Weaver

On the 2 class 1's I worked for plus the 1 short line, the policy was all the same ,call the dispatcher or operations manager which in turn calls the maintainer. Basically in the goodness of my heart i let the traffic around, if something happened it would be my fault and i should have waited for the maintainer. This is why rails carry job insurance in case your given time or terminated. No good deed goes unpunished with class 1 railroading. Some guys would let traffic build up and not let anyone through including emergency vehicles unless instructed by a dispatcher or operations manager over the radio to let traffic trough closed gates. This is what railroad management has FORCED upon the rank and file. UNLESS YOUR TOLD TO DO IT BY A SUPERIOR, TIMETABLE, SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS, OR RULEBOOK, ITS YOUR FAULT IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG.

Usually in the field on the Long Island, common sense prevails. Of course we're responsible if we screw up, but nobody likes keeping crossings plugged. With the amount of traffic on many crossings, it would simply be ridiculous to disrupt the entire town. Nobody likes looking that stupid. We raise the gates for traffic if we have them blocked. Our radios still have four channels and they don't work too reliably.

I've noticed from at least the 1970's to the present that at certain railroad crossings the bell rings continuously, while at others, the bell only rings as the gate is lowering. I thought crossings ajacent to the stations had the continuously ringing bells, but at Secatogue Ave (Farmingdale), which is adjacent to the station, the electronic bell only rings when the gates are on their way down. Is there a protocol that the LIRR Signal Department follows as to when the crossing signal bell rings continuously or only during the gate lowering phase?

Chicagorail1 wrote:I have yet to see a crossing a crew member can manually raise or lower still functional.

There's a few in the industrial areas of Portland, and a couple in Vancouver. But they are slowly going away as the industrial spurs get ripped up one by one.

A quick question ...

This sign is just beyond a crossing on the NICTD South Shore line in Miller (Gary) Indiana (about a half mile west of the interchange with CSX and about a half mile before the next crossing).

I assume that the circuit is referencing the next crossing, not the one just passed? (The end of the circuit for the next crossing?) If I'm reading the sign right, the next crossing will time out in 90 seconds - which with the interchange with CSX is important. CSX trains with trackage rights will pull empty coal cars westbound from the power plant nine miles east of the interchange point, stop then reverse through the connection track on to the CSX line. Then they will move forward again on CSX through Miller toward Chicago.

So crews pass this sign knowing that the next crossing will be active for 90 seconds? If they don't pass the sign the next gate doesn't come down?

If the sign was just before the crossing I'd interpret it differently. Any opinions?

This is the end of the circuit for the crossing prior to this sign which the train would have crossed before getting to this sign. It tells crews that the gates will raise if the equipment clears this point or if the equipment clears the crossing but does not pass the sign/end of circuit, the gates will raise after 90 seconds.

So it is basically a buffer zone for a train that clears the actual crossing but doesn't clear the sign? Leaving the gates activated for 90 seconds in case the train needs to reverse (which happens often with the exchange with CSX noted in my previous post)?