Trains blocking railroad crossings.

Near Dietrich Idaho more often than not when a train has to wait for antoher they will stop before the railroad crossing on occasion back up. However there are occasions were they will however be blocking at a crossing while stopped. How long can they be there and do they try when possible to avoid blocking traffic when it is necessary to stop. when I seen them block is when one was right behind the other.

I believe a train can block a crossing for 15 minutes.

Not in Blue Island, IL. There's a 10-minute limit, and then it's "ticket time". [Used to live there.] It was usually a CSX problem, and the cops delivered the ticket to one of the towers in Barr Yard. Think I read it was $1,500 each occurence.

Each state has different rules for blocking public crossings. The ticket is usually issued to the railroad and not an individual. BUT...most times the railroad's law department move the ticket to a federal court where it is immediately dropped.

CSXT also has that problem in the detroit area, the auto dargs or even the coal drags have to wait for the local to go to the 2nd track, this leads to 30-45 minutes delays, if the local is not late.

I think in Vincennes,IN and other locations in Indiana they had these fines, instead of a ticket it was more of a fine. They would fine by the occurence it was by CSX they had problems and the problems ceased.

Here is a little more information broken down by state. Sorry, I had to copy the text to the reply as I have no idea how to append a file.


This chapter provides a state by state survey of statutory provisions concerning the blocking of
crossings by railroads, the exceptions to the law and the penalties imposed if they are listed in the code
section. The majority of states place restrictions on the amount of time a highway-rail crossing can be
blocked. The laws and regulations vary, but never do they exceed more than ten minutes. A number of
states list an exception for emergencies or circumstances beyond the control of the railroad company. That
is not to say that the individual cities and towns within those states with no relevant statute do not have an
ordinance restricting the blocking of highway-rail crossings within their jurisdictions. A number of them do,
but to list them all would extend beyond the scope of this book.


EDIT:
feel free to link to the original page, but as per rr.net rules, you cannot copy & paste entire documents here. you can paraphrase, or paste the intro. pasting thousands of words of copied material, isnt allowed.

These state regulations do not apply if there is a Federal rule that superscedes them...IE: Crew Dies (End of Time in Service), mechanical failure or problem, etc...

RailBull wrote:These state regulations do not apply if there is a Federal rule that superscedes them...IE: Crew Dies (End of Time in Service), mechanical failure or problem, etc...

That makes sense. Can a municipality impose stricter fines or more stringent standards than the state law. Seems like in Washington State, for example, some cities impose speed limits on trains. Hence, the question.

Local areas can inforce certain speed limits in certain areas....usually pertains to high population areas in downtowns sections...but they have to give UP advanced notice so they can have time to put out a track bulletin to thier engineers.

After waiting 20 minutes for a train in Trenton Michigan to clear the road, I called Trenton's finest and was told that,per Federal law (passed about 5 years ago), there no longer is a time limit for a train to block a road. In Michigan it was 5 minutes, I know, I hit them with a ticket before retiring. Now, thanks to our Federal government, the railroad can block the roads and streets in Any State for ANY length of time and not be fined. If one values fire/police emergencies response times, it would be wise to check where the railroad crossings are in relation to these services before buying or renting a house.

So what the hell do you want? You want your grain, oil, feed, commodities but you don't want to be "inconvenienced by a train"! I know one little piss-ant town that started doing that and the railroad secretly began to buy up property about 40 miles away. They bought RoW and several tracts of land for an industrial park. They built buildings and facilities, secretly met with existing industries in that little snot-nosed town of ticket Nazis, and offered leases at ridiculous prices. One by one, the industries began to MOVE to the new park, and finally, they put up a FENCE at each end of the right of way and took up the rails into the town utterly bypassing the little town. It lost tax revenue, jobs and all the things that drive a county's economy until it literally went BANKRUPT and shrivelled into a ghost town! If I were a railroad CEO, that is EXACTLY what I would do if they tried that with me! WhaT do cops do when there's no town ( or railroad) to "police"?

GF

Gadfly wrote:So what the hell do you want? You want your grain, oil, feed, commodities but you don't want to be "inconvenienced by a train"! I know one little piss-ant town that started doing that and the railroad secretly began to buy up property about 40 miles away. They bought RoW and several tracts of land for an industrial park. They built buildings and facilities, secretly met with existing industries in that little snot-nosed town of ticket Nazis, and offered leases at ridiculous prices. One by one, the industries began to MOVE to the new park, and finally, they put up a FENCE at each end of the right of way and took up the rails into the town utterly bypassing the little town. It lost tax revenue, jobs and all the things that drive a county's economy until it literally went BANKRUPT and shrivelled into a ghost town! If I were a railroad CEO, that is EXACTLY what I would do if they tried that with me! WhaT do cops do when there's no town ( or railroad) to "police"?

GF

i'd like to see the "proof" of this having happened. how do you "secretly" buy real estate? and why would you hide the fact you were buying it? if it was such a small, insignificant town, what would they possibly have to say to the railroad, for buying property? sounds more like a FOAF story, or urban legend. fencing off the row, and ripping the rails? who exactly was going to run on it? details, gf!!! :D

While I have not the energy or time, nor do I care, to bother with it, A company can buy any real estate it likes. By "secretly", since it was 40 miles away, the town being bypassed would have no way of knowing what the railroad was up to until it was too late. They would have no reason to suspect anything until the deed was done and the rails became derelict.

As to the company, I don't remember---and don't care. It was told to me in a company safety meeting over 20 years ago over coffee. However, I DO get tired of all the bull---- towns and cities trying to tell the railroads what and how to run their business. This town I DO remember from the Brosnan years on Southern. Spencer, NC was once a HUGE rail facility employing many people and home to a big roundhouse and repair facility. They began to hassle Southern RR over wastewater, various other issues, and trying to fine them for not complying with their[i/] silly guidelines. Southern bought land about 20 miles north of Spencer, and at the time I was hired or shortly after, Linwood Yard came to be. The shops were closed, as well as Spencer Yard, and basically the railroad told Spencer to go F#@^% itself! Anyone that knew, or heard of, DW Brosnan, knew he was a profane and fierce CEO that would do what he said he would. Under L Stanley Crane, his protege', this project was completed, and locomotive repairs were moved to Atlanta and Chattanooga, leaving the big historic roundhouse and shop facilities to be condos for pigeons. The State of NC bought the facility and made it into a transportation museum. While an entirely different story, I am sure that Spencer misses the revenue and the business the railroad brought. After all, Spencer was only there because of the railroad.

I once had an incident where I blocked a crossing for a considerable time. The town in which this happened had found a cash cow by fining the railroad for blocking crossings in town. The company said that it would have an investigation for the next crew blocking the crossing. I had to pick up a train in interchange from another railroad in this town. The train had been cut to clear a crossing. When I took it, I had to do a continuity test, and a leakage test, due to the leader not having a flow meter. The train would not pass the leakage test, by a long shot. The conductor found a car with a badly leaking angle cock. In order to set the car out, I had to block several crossings for some time. I will say that there was a road paralleling the track on either side, and a cross street every block. A car could easily have gone up to the first open crossing.
Barney Fife saw this and multiplied the number of crossings blocked by the total time they were blocked. Soon afterward, the postman delivered a certified letter to me. I told the local chairman what had happened. He passed this to the company. They cleared me, as long as I made a statement of the incident. Soon after getting out of the investigation, I got a call from the company lawyer. She asked me again what happened. I told her about having to set the car out to pass the brake test. She then built a case based on the fact that federal airbrake rules supersede local ordinances.