Western Railroad Discussion > Snow gone and other things

It was a beautiful day in Texas today with the temp getting up to 76 degrees.  Tired of being cooped up by snow and cold for several days I headed west.  I had been wanting to check out an overpass on the UP Baird Sub over a poor county road in Palo Pinto County.  The reason was a post on TO many days ago about trucks etc hitting low railroad bridges and I remembered this one being quite low.  And yes it is 10' 9".  A driver would hardly ever notice the height because there is no "low bridge" sign.  Just some black numbers hard to see until you get close.  .So any truckers need to be on the ball.    Close examination of the bridge showed it had been hit twice chipping the concrete but no structural damage.  

I was hungry and went into the small town of Strawn and got a pack & sack burger and then started to leave town but thought I could see a freight car far to the west on the passing track.  The passing track is 11,236 ft long and with a good amount of it in town (about 5000 ft), I didn.think  that it  would be a short enough train, maybe  just a set out car.  So I took off down another county road and soon found it was indeed a train, a rather short one for UP now days.  It had two engines and the leader was a CSX engine hidden quite well by the trees. It appeared no one was in the engines and they were not running.  Can't imagine a short train crew  running out of time in just 75 miles from Ft Worth.. 

 Move just a couple of feet either way the more the trees hid the engines and train.  Boring post?  Well, it was a boring day.

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Generally it is the responsibility of the state, county or city to put up that type of sign. But I would think that it would be in the railroad's best interest to put them up in this instance with a VERY LOW bridge. There is probably not much truck traffic on that road, but all it takes is one.
Bill Pyper
Lacey, WA