Level crossing stupidity...

[Ken.W 1,168]

On 17/11/2020 at 15:58, petethemole said:

I saw that.  Given the time the MOM quoted between the barriers coming down and the train arriving (25-30 sec), I worked out that the couple had probably crossed the line quite safely before the crossing activated but were surprised that a train came so soon afterwards.

 

20 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Unfortunately the CCTV didn't show where the couple were when they thought the lights weren't working ...................... must admit the Network Rail guy dismissing their claim as just a trick of the light was a little worrying  -  it was a right-side trick of the light in this instance but could be a wrong-side one next time !

 

Nice shot of a minimalist HST 'set' !

 

Sounds right for the time AHB's are set for the lights coming on for a train approaching at line speed.

 

The one remaining AHB on the ECML, Markle, on the Up you'd see the barriers falling as you approached at the permitted 100 mph. At some AHBs on slower routes like Newcastle - Carlisle or Edinburgh - Carstairs, I'd see traffic still crossing ahead before the lights started.

[ajwffc 94]

some of the Paddington 24/7 episode is on the Channel 5 Facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3314540722004894

[Hobby 3,172]

The comments make interesting reading...

[melmerby 14,208]

More US antics at Chehalis WA:

 

[meil 381]

On 18/11/2020 at 17:40, PhilJ W said:

That looks nasty, any casualties? It looks as though the car drivers exit may have been blocked by another vehicle hence the blowing of the car horn. Of course the driver should have made sure that his exit was clear before driving onto the crossing.

No it was blocked by the barrier arm coming down.

[PhilJ W 82,925]

News coming in:-

https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2020/11/major-disruption-incident-at-a-railway-level-crossing-near-retford-lner-says-do-not-travel.html

[SHMD 2,765]

Here's what National Rail Enquiries says about it.

 

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/260463.aspx

 

 

Customers are advised to not travel today

also..

There will be no trains to / from London Kings Cross this weekend either!

 

 

No joy all round.

 

 

Kev.

 

[boxbrownie 5,814]

OHLE damaged maybe?

[melmerby 14,208]

On 18/11/2020 at 17:40, PhilJ W said:

That looks nasty, any casualties? It looks as though the car drivers exit may have been blocked by another vehicle hence the blowing of the car horn. Of course the driver should have made sure that his exit was clear before driving onto the crossing.

The occupants got out before the train hit.

The cause was first the driver's indecision and second not driving through the barrier once it was down.

 

EDIT

This is the road and the direction the car was going:

Note the signage

 

https://goo.gl/maps/TAKfSp5THAbaZv7MA

 

Edited November 20, 2020 by melmerby

[Grovenor 1,140]

So there is a barrier on the exit side but not on the entry, except apparently for the sidewalk. And the signage is not exactly conspicious! Pretty poor crossing design IMHO.

 

Wrong, see below.

Edited November 20, 2020 by Grovenor
Correction

[Derekl 263]

7 minutes ago, Grovenor said:

So there is a barrier on the exit side but not on the entry, except apparently for the sidewalk. And the signage is not exactly conspicious! Pretty poor crossing design IMHO.

 

There are four barriers covering all entrance and exits, plus some pretty conspicuous lights. I would have thought it patently obvious that you don't stop on a rail crossing, but that sign is readable (if not very large).

[PhilJ W 82,925]

Also the lights were flashing before he drove onto the crossing.

 

[Hobby 3,172]

Hungary:

 

 

[Wickham Green too 1,692]

Why did they stop filming just before the train - presumably - hit ? ............................. prudent to abandon ship before the tractor & trailer got catapulted onto them perhaps ?

[SHMD 2,765]

Idiotaks!

 

 

Kev.

 

[caradoc 4,775]

The disregard by so many motorists for the lights and barriers is astonishing, but it does also show why (in the UK anyway) at AHB LCs the barriers are down for the minimum safe period before a train passes, as at Victory LC discussed above. 

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by caradoc
Spelling mistake

[ejstubbs 1,578]

On 17/11/2020 at 21:53, Wickham Green too said:

must admit the Network Rail guy dismissing their claim as just a trick of the light was a little worrying

 

It was the voice-over narrator, not the MOM who used the words "trick of the light".  The MOM did mention that the sun had been shining but he didn't say anything (that we were shown) to suggest that he thought that might have been the cause of the couple's mistake.  (And the on-train CCTV did confirm that they had been mistaken, clearly showing that the barriers were down when the train in question passed.)

 

Given that, according to the woman, the incident occurred at 10:58* (you may need the subtitles enabled to catch that) - and it doesn't seem to be autumn or winter since all the trees have their leaves - I don't think the sun would have been particularly low in the sky.  The couple were talking about what they saw from the pub car park, which means they would have been looking pretty much due west (map here), with the sun more or less behind them.   So I'm not entirely sure what relevance the MOM thought the sun might have had.  He may just have been thinking out loud, but since he was being almost continually interrupted by the couple it's difficult to make a great deal of sense out what any them were saying!

 

* The log shown in the sequence had timings around 09:48.  Do such logs show GMT all year round?  If not then I'd suspect that was filmed at a different time and/or place and just cut in; it doesn't seem to tally with the couple's story otherwise.

[Hobby 3,172]

More to the point, if you can't clearly see what the lights are showing then you approach it at caution and assume that it's against you, same as traffic lights. Perhaps someone should remind them.

[melmerby 14,208]

6 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Why did they stop filming just before the train - presumably - hit ? ............................. prudent to abandon ship before the tractor & trailer got catapulted onto them perhaps ?

Maybe decided to do what everybody else did and jump the lights?

[Wickham Green too 1,692]

I suspect you're right ....... and we don't actually know how long they'd been sat there with no obvious train appearing - it might be very tempting after a while !

[pH 27,882]

I won’t quote posts, just reply to some points I’ve read over the previous pages.

 

- walking on rail lines. It wasn’t too unusual here when we first came to Canada nearly 40 years ago. The lines weren’t fenced and the traffic was generally slow, noisy freights. There was plenty of warning of approaching trains.
 

Even railway employees weren’t too worried about it. I was out for a walk one night with one of my sons, who was about 6-7 at the time. We stopped to look at a train which was sitting at the exit from a local industry, with the crew getting off and crossing the tracks (CP mainline) towards us to go to a restaurant for a meal break. The engineer said to me, pointing to my son, “Take him across and show him round the cab.” I did not do so!

 

Things changed when the West Coast Express (commuter rail) started running. More fencing went up, and people gradually realized that these trains were quicker and quieter than freights. It took some time though; one teenager was killed, walking on the track with his back to the traffic and with his Walkman plugged in, and I was on a WCE that went into emergency because of a mother and two young kids walking on the track, backs to the traffic.

 

- crossing against lights. Generally, people are good about not doing this. There’s still the problem of unguarded crossings, though. I have actually gone over a crossing in the situation where that semi was hit by the reversing locomotive - where a train was stopped close to a crossing with the crossing lights flashing and no barriers. (That doesn’t happen much, if at all, now. Someone, crew or dispatcher, appears to have the ability to turn the lights and bells off, and re-activate them when the train is about to move.) In the case where I crossed, the engineer waved me on, plus he had several thousand tons of train behind him and would probably have taken about a minute to get to the crossing after restarting his train.

 

- trains blocking crossings. They will sometimes split trains on running lines if they are going to be across a crossing for a long time, or the crossing is on a busy road. I’ve seen it done for a 5 minute stop, though maybe the crew thought they were going to be there longer. The conductor drops off at the crossing, when the train stops he uncouples ahead of the first car in rear of the crossing and the train draws ahead to open the crossing. When it’s time to move, the front of the train backs up, the conductor couples up again and the train moves off.

[melmerby 14,208]

2 hours ago, pH said:

 

- trains blocking crossings. They will sometimes split trains on running lines if they are going to be across a crossing for a long time, or the crossing is on a busy road. I’ve seen it done for a 5 minute stop, though maybe the crew thought they were going to be there longer. The conductor drops off at the crossing, when the train stops he uncouples ahead of the first car in rear of the crossing and the train draws ahead to open the crossing. When it’s time to move, the front of the train backs up, the conductor couples up again and the train moves off.

It's not unusual to see trains blocking crossings, sometimes for several hours on Virtual Railcam cameras.

Deshler is a favourite with the west to south chord and results in about 4 or 5 blocked crossings.

 

I did however see one day, when a scheduled stop to pick up a crippled loco at La Plata with a westbound freight, resulted in the train stopping short of the crossing, uncoupling the locos from the consist, drawing forward to get the cripple from the siding and then reversing back to re-couple & continue the journey.

 

[pH 27,882]

On 20/10/2020 at 09:32, F-UnitMad said:

"That sort of thing" i.e. street running, came in with the Wild West, more or less. Unlike in the UK, where railways were built to serve towns & villages that had already existed for centurys (& often the railways couldn't get near the town due to landowner objections) in the USA the Railroads often came first; towns being built around them.

 

Though not always the case, the typical US 'grid' system of town planning also makes it easier for trains running down the middle of Main Street.

l remember seeing a picture of the bunk cars used on construction trains on the Canadian Pacific mainline across the Prairies  in the 1880s - they were three storeys high. I thought “How did they get those under bridges? Oh, wait ...”.

 

A couple of decades later, the Grand Trunk Pacific mainline (now Canadian National) was built across the Prairies further north. They had a standard plan for laying out new settlements on the line - same number of streets, same street names, same orientation with respect to the prevailing winds etc. They could do that because they were building on unsettled, flat land.

[phil-b259 5,618]

On 22/11/2020 at 14:06, ejstubbs said:

 

* The log shown in the sequence had timings around 09:48.  Do such logs show GMT all year round?  If not then I'd suspect that was filmed at a different time and/or place and just cut in; it doesn't seem to tally with the couple's story otherwise.

 

It depends on the data logger - the ones we have remain on GMT all year round so an hour has to be added to all timings it gives during the summer. Sometimes this is done automatically if the data then gets used in graphical replay software but if viewing a text log file you have to do it in your head.

Edited November 23, 2020 by phil-b259

[talisman56 927]

Another one at Chehalis:

 

 

 

and a slightly more amusing one here: