Have you ever had any "sketchy" incidences when crossing railroad tracks?

Question

I also always wondered what would happen if you crossed in your car right when the warning goes off and the "thingy" comes down. Any cool, or maybe not so cool, stories?

Answer 1

If the "thingy" is the crossing gate, it will bounce a couple times on top of a car or what ever is in the way. It's balanced with only a small amount of weight on the gate arm itself. It would simply rest on top of a vehicle with little down pressure. If it gets hit by a vehicle while down, it's designed to break off. I'm an engineer and see cars try to out run the train at the crossing often. I operate in a very rural area and most folks are really good around here about train safety. Once a week, I take a train to a large city for interchange, and that's where all the maniacs are.

Answer 2

I cant really speak of sketchy from a motorists point, i have been pretty careful, but I have been involved in several from the trackside of crossings.

There have been close calls, some seem a bit comical in retrospect, never at the time though.

One time we just barely missed a lady in a Subaru wagon, I mean missed by fractions of an inch.

Turn out we didnt quite miss her, somewhere along the length of the train the clearance was so close it took our her plastic clearance lights.

She wanted the railroad to pay to repair her car!

Not long ago a kid had just bought an old 4wd pickup, was out joyriding and tried to cross the tracks at a location where there was no crossing, he got high centered and hung up of course.

We got stopped in plenty of time, the kid was pretty shook up, by the time the deputy sherrif was finished writing tickets I think he owed more in fines than he had paid for that old beater of a truck LOL.

I hope this doesnt get too long and boring but one other amusing story comes to mind, several years we were on a branch line, had been snowing hard all day so you could not see the rail, everything was covered so it looked like a smooth country road. We were going slow and here comes a figure running at us and waving arms, was a teenage girl and she was terrified, she had turned up the tracks thinking it was the street to her house and instantly got hung up on the rail. We were going slow and stopped easily and with a few passing motorists we were able to get her car unstuck in no time and on her merry way.

I dont mind this type of encounter, she was thoroughly terrified and shaking, but there was no damage done. I truly believe that she and her friend will always have a very healthy respect for train tracks in the future after that scare so perhpas in the future there will be at least one less person driving about not paying attention.

The bottom line is BE CAREFUL!! If you dont watch ouf for your own safety, who will?

Answer 3

I was behind an elderly man in my pick up truck he got on to the first set of three sets of tracks and crawled over them.When he got to the last set I looked saw no trains and continued to cross,but he stopped to adjust his seat or something and I heard a train blowing horn.As I was trying to back up the warning arms came down on the topof the cab of my truck dislodging my fog lights and when I tried to move more I noticed it was tearing the lights offf so I stopped and the train blew by shacking me in my seat.When the train was done I looked up to see the old genleman's car on the tracks and he was standing on the side of the road got into his car and sped off.I ended up having to pay for damaging the arms and had to replace my lights

As for the elderly gentleman God bless

Answer 4

depending on the length of the crossing, the crossing gates can be pretty long, and despite what someone else wrote, you could experience some car damage depending on where the gate catches your vehicle---- in addition, i work for a railroad and i can understand where hoghead is coming from, you'd have to be on a 300 ton engine going down the rail at 60 mph and barely miss a car b/c the driver didn't want to wait -- i've seen people run into the side of trains when all the other traffic is stop and hoghead is right, there is nothing cool about anything colliding with a train or vice-versa even the hilarious makes you shutter, for example, i was on a train coming out of a yard and we were approaching a crossing with the gates coming down and what do know, some guy is riding down the sidewalk and notices the gates coming down so he decides to beat the gates by riding on a two lane road towards the end of the gates thinking he could get by before the gates were all the way down, unfortunately for him he was wrong and he tried to duck under the gates while on his bike, needless to say, that was the meanest clothesline i have ever seen, he was slapped off of the bicycle and slammed the back off his head on the pavement, he got though, pride a little shaken I'm sure and took off riding again until we started blowing the crossing which made him look back and caused him to crash again but lucky for him though it was into some hedges -- the fortunate part for him though is that we had a loaded train and were just leaviing, had it been an empty train the story might have ended differently

Answer 5

Sadly, I could tell you dozens of stories of death and destruction and shattered lives.

There is no such thing as a "cool" close encounter with a moving train under any circumstances.