Western Railroad Discussion > Look out for the cars!

Are you old enough to remember seeing rural crossbucks with the lettering “Lookout For the Cars” down the side? I sure can. Growing up in the 1960s I can also remember a rhyming little ditty that went like this: “RR crossing, look out for the cars. Can you spell it without any Rs?” It was a play on words trying to confuse the listener into spelling the word “it” without the letter R. Easy enough! But the ditty did its job. It tended to make you look a little closer at any RR crossing you were about to use.

In late June of 2011 I was camped out in Newton, KS for a 4-day odyssey covering BNSF’s Employee Appreciation Specials. They were running 2 days out & back, out of Newton. Then the same 2 day process was repeated out of Wellington. Both Newton & Wellington were away-from-home (Emporia) terminals back in my old Santa Fe days, so it was like an old home week for me! On the first night I sure didn’t feel like being cooped up in a motel room. Especially when I had my tripod and my incurable love for shooting available light. Of course, I grabbed my gear and went skulking around in the dark night... :^)

1. Looking southwest at an eastbound (L-R) stack train crossing Main Street in Newton, KS. EXIF: 13 seconds at 100 ISO. 30mm @ f7.1. According the current Google Maps street view, that “Cash Advance” business visible through the train is now a vacant building...
Photo date: 11:10 PM on June 21, 2011.

Thanks for looking!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Very nice photo. I often wondered about the "Look out for the cars", I'd first be concerned about the locomotive pulling those cars!
Gonut

That is a great night shot.  I never saw any of those old crossing signs in my part of the Carolinas.  Before lighted gate crossings on the Southern, we had a number of people run into the sides of the train.  My longtime BLE president-chief engineer "Ironhead" McLaughlin lobbied for years and spoke to Congressional and state committees in an effort to get reflectorized striping applied on the lower sides of freight cars to stop some of the people from running into the sides of our trains at night, especially applied to low cars like flats and gons.  I remember growing up on an Atlantic Coast Line branchline in the 50's and 60's and seeing the ACL cars with their white painted, broken line "Prismo" stripes on the lower edges.  "Ironhead" lived long enough to see the reflectorized striping  be applied, and feel that it made a difference.