Western Railroad Discussion > Long Trains

Watching trains where I live along the transcon mega trains are a common site. A major street in my city is closed for some of these mega trains for several minutes with street traffic backing up east and west. This means fire trucks and medical responce have to try and go around to the other side of the tracks. Fire trucks cannot go under the bridge where the tracks are located because the railroad bridge is too low, so another fire dept. has to take over. All this takes time when emergency help is needed which could cost lives. So the BNSF runs mega trains which pours money into their coffers while someone else could lose his or her life because emergency help could not arrive in time.

                                                                                                 Waycar,

This is the reason Salt Lake City needs the Rio Grande Plan. We can't rely on railroads to be a good neighbor anymore.

Economists refer to these negative effects as "externalities", meaning that the negative effects and/or costs are borne outside the corporation.  In other words, privatize the profits and dump costs on others, in most cases local municipalities or other private property owners.  Back in the bad old pre-EPA days, this is why the air was so dirty and rivers were just considered open sewers for industrial runoff. 

Traffic back-ups due to 250-car trains moseying across a grade crossing is just another externality.

- Norm

The situation isn't limited to the location in your message. Another such situation hapens in LaGrange, KY where CSXT operates down a main street with long trains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SLt3AT0rXk

Most trains are very long and start down the street at less than 10 MPH. When they have the road blocked from one end of town to the other they then can increase their speed, I think to 20 mph. More than once I've seen emergency vehicles sitting "trainside" awaiting passage so the run can continue. It gets even more "interesting" if a train hits a vehicle and then comes to a halt blocking as much of the town as they've gone by until the crash is investigated.

The line involved is the former L&N between Cincinnati and Louisville and is an "active" line.

It is not unusual for the town to be "cut in half" for ten minutes or longer and this happens day and night.

DaleR
 

UP's double main  from Chicago runs thru my town. There is a yard and x-overs and a crew change point just east of downtown.  Almost every train except the long pool swaps crews here and just about every manifest train does block swapping here.
When these monster freights do their work they block every crossing in town.  Luckily there is 1 underpass close and a new overpass was built 2 miles east of town for the county highway.  Still the mayor and town brought UP tona town meeting to discuss train lengths and block crossing times, UP's response "sorry,not sorry go to hell we got trains to run"

And thats that.
JC
 

It's not just the Union Pacific.  The standard railroad response to any local issue is "It's interstate commerce and that takes priority over your dinky little problems, so live with it". There doesn't seem to be an easy solution in most locales, because in order to remove the at grade crossing it requires tearing up a large section of the central business district. .    

Paniolo_man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is the reason Salt Lake City needs the Rio
> Grande Plan. We can't rely on railroads to be a
> good neighbor anymore.

What is the Rio Grande Plan?

Ask your local politicians to get back some of the tax money you and the BNSF have paid for a new highway overpass.

Bob Wilcox
Charlottesville, VA
My Flickr Shots

dbrcnw Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The situation isn't limited to the location in
> your message. Another such situation hapens in
> LaGrange, KY where CSXT operates down a main
> street with long trains.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SLt3AT0rXk
>
> Most trains are very long and start down the
> street at less than 10 MPH. When they have the
> road blocked from one end of town to the other
> they then can increase their speed, I think to 20
> mph. More than once I've seen emergency vehicles
> sitting "trainside" awaiting passage so the run
> can continue. It gets even more "interesting" if a
> train hits a vehicle and then comes to a halt
> blocking as much of the town as they've gone by
> until the crash is investigated.
>
> The line involved is the former L&N between
> Cincinnati and Louisville and is an "active"
> line.
>
> It is not unusual for the town to be "cut in half"
> for ten minutes or longer and this happens day and
> night.
>
> DaleR
>  

CSX and its predecessor were foolish not to have bypassed LaGrange KY decades ago. Now it's too late, as much of the surrounding farmland appears to have been converted to schlock suburban housing for people fleeing Louisville. Any possible bypass through Kentucky would now require too much additional mileage (as much or more than the extra mileage through Indiana).

Out these parts on The Overland if a train is approaching say 13,000-plus feet and it needs to grab a siding it's going to cause issues.  

Happens on a regular basis but usually these long trains bust a move on through no problem.  And there's a lot of them.  

But when one of these Monsters acts up it's definitely a ripple-effect and it sure can clog up our very-remote crossings.   

No one complains out here really.  Things are slower anyways.  

Chuck