Model Train Journal

See how long it can take to hear a train coming:=> http://www.today.com/video/rossen-repor ... 1815235593

Thanks, Wayne. My guess is that most of us do not realize how quiet modern trains are especially on welded rail. I can be by the tracks in our little town and know a train is coming but not really hear it or look for it until I hear the bells on the crossing signal. With only six trains a day I am always looking.

I remember being in Lafayette Indiana last year. They have a nice overpass where you can view trains on the NS. I was standing with camera in hand looking north when all of a sudden there was a train passing beneath me heading north! Whoa I said to myself. Glad I wasn't on the rails. There is a quiet order through Lafayette too. Love those trains but need to be careful no doubt. The local Indiana Railroad prosecuted two young girls who we walking along a trestle and we're lucky to get off that when a train came upon them and had to emergency stop.

Jim K

My tale:
Years ago after we had bought our first house my wife decided she needed a flower bed. Decided to edge it with railroad ties that I couldn't afford nor move alone. But PRR or PC (whatever) in doing track maintenance used a guillotine to chop the ties into 3 sections which were then discarded by trackside. So my then-10-year old son and I decided to go and liberate some. We were busy pilfering same on trackage east of Paoli. Engrossed in hauling and tugging we failed notice a GG-1 hauling *** on the 4-track main. Did you know that GG1's are virtually soundless? Not only that, the track was on a curve. We literally didn't know whether to shit or go blind (a Southern term, I guess). Fell down into the drainage ditch between two tracks as the train whipped by.
Then we went back to pilfering 1/3 ties....

Hearing from the four of you, Wayne, Roger, Jim K, and Rex, has provided a valuable real-life lesson about being too near railroads. I haven't been near tracks for at least a decade, and that was merely standing alongside my car, at a crossing, among corn fields in Tully, NY, just watching a freight go through, along with two other stopped vehicles. I did not take deliberate notice of the sound, just of the lumbering of the train across the road and straight through the fields.

But your explanations of personal experiences give close attention to how quiet trains can be nowadays, something I never gave any thought to. If I ever find myself in a position to give advice in this regard, I will recite your stories as authority for warning them to stay away from any intimate experience with and view of the tracks.

It was only back in the 50's - 60's that I had any experiences with trains worth remembering, and that was usually, as seen here, waiting for them to rattle-n-roll right across the main shopping drag in McKeesport, PA, where one could easily get a very intimate view and experience with them. The sounds were earth-shaking and chest-rattling, so my experience with RR tracks was almost only like the man seen here (except that I'd reach out my hands from the sidewalk-side of the railing in front of the National Records store to actually touch them). It would never have occurred to me that they could be quiet, until now, hearing from you guys. Thanks!

I worked for Amtrak for 32 years in Albany (Rensselaer) home of our beloved (and cursed!) Rohr Turboliners.
These things were real killers as they were impossible to hear coming unless the horn was sounded. At 110 mph you heard nothing until it started to pass you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rjf8bl3cmw

Peter

Delaware state has a railroad intersection just like the one photoed above. Now picture some impatient fool behind the bus. This fool makes a right hand turn to use that little cut off street and blaam O. Hit by a speeding train. Once a month somebody gets crushed. So much so that a pizza shop has a camera set up and these videos show up on the evening news.
This could be the one i'm thinking of.
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/new ... /29162787/

robert. wrote:Delaware state has a railroad intersection just like the one photoed above. Now picture some impatient fool behind the bus. This fool makes a right hand turn to use that little cut off street and blaam O. Hit by a speeding train. Once a month somebody gets crushed. So much so that a pizza shop has a camera set up and these videos show up on the evening news.
This could be the one i'm thinking of.
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/new ... /29162787/

I know that intersection very well - spent a few years at the University there.......Newark, DE has a 1 way main street and folks get confused passing through town going either direction particularly where 896 peels off to PA.

Crossing down at the Deer Park has been like that for a long time. Once a month? Seems like a little hyperbole....

Hey, Murph:
That photo is total fodder for modeling.

Rufus T. Firefly wrote: Once a month? Seems like a little hyperbole....

Spend some time up in the cab and you'd believe once a day. I could never believe some of the idiotic close calls I witnessed from the right side of the cab. Thankfully, I only took out a few deer and a rather unfortunate cow.

Tom Dempsey wrote:

Rufus T. Firefly wrote: Once a month? Seems like a little hyperbole....

Spend some time up in the cab and you'd believe once a day. I could never believe some of the idiotic close calls I witnessed from the right side of the cab. Thankfully, I only took out a few deer and a rather unfortunate cow.

I was referring to the single specific location noted above - someone getting crushed to death in a single location once a month seems just a wee bit high for an intersection off Main St. in Newark. Near misses of drunk students coming out of the Deer Park, I see that happening.....

Overall nationally is something entirely different.

Rufus the new trend is to call It fake news. Now on to deflecting attention. Arizona has 5 intersections in the top 15. 3 years ago I spent a week in Streator Illinois. Everyday they would bring a long freight train into the yard. This train would block 2 intersections for half an hour.People would walk under it or over the couplers as crewman broke it a part then pushed it into the yard.

rex desilets wrote:Hey, Murph:
That photo is total fodder for modeling.

Good to hear. Thanks for saying so.

robert. wrote:Rufus the new trend is to call It fake news.

Yes, alternate facts. I try to avoid generating such and find the practice an abomination.

Now on to deflecting attention. Arizona has 5 intersections in the top 15. 3 years ago I spent a week in Streator Illinois. Everyday they would bring a long freight train into the yard. This train would block 2 intersections for half an hour.People would walk under it or over the couplers as crewman broke it a part then pushed it into the yard.

Fools exist everywhere, or so it seems. There may be a higher percentage number within IL. Hopefully, it is not contagious.

I will quote myself: Humanity is resplendent in its diversity and display of idiocy, foolishness, bad ideas, and folks attempting to qualify for their personal Darwin Award, and then failing. One merely has to (almost unavoidable, sadly so) look around yourself while passing through the continuum and then let some small portion of it register on your sensory apparatuses w/o incurring excess damage from the experience.

From the folks at the TCA:

Messages

April 19 in railroad history: Trespasser killed by AMTRAK train

One year ago today, Brittanney Tine (24) and her boyfriend Robert Webb (29) were struck by a northbound AMTRAK Northeast Regional train in Wallingford CT. The pair were walking north on a single-track right-of-way around 8:10 p.m. and apparently didn't hear the train approaching from behind them.

A local resident said that he heard the train's horn, followed by a loud thud, then a male voice crying for help. At first he thought a deer had been hit by the train; but, after hearing screams, he ran to the scene and found Webb sitting by the side of Old Colony Road. Another witness claimed to have seen Webb running down the embankment.

Tine was pronounced dead at the scene. Webb was treated at Yale-New Haven Hospital for a severely fractured hand. He told investigators that the couple had just come from a Marshall's clothing store, roughly two blocks north of the railroad on Broad Street. Webb claimed he did not know that the railway was operational. Far from being abandoned, construction was actually underway to double-track this route between New Haven and Springfield, as these Google Earth photographs show.


https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/toy ... /238922420 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/toy ... /238922420


John Bernick, assistant rail administrator for Connecticut’s Department of Transportation, was quoted as saying, "People need to remember rail lines are private property…. unlike track constructed decades ago, modern track is welded, so you don't hear the click-clack noise any more…. trains are quieter, which makes trespassing more serious. Unfortunately, we've had a rash of fatalities lately."

The Central Connecticut Record-Journal reported that the nearest grade crossing, where an engineer would have been required to sound the train's horn, was at Pent Road, over a mile from the scene of the mishap. However a neighbor, who lives just one block north of the scene, claimed that he did hear a horn blast immediately before the thud.

As I write these words, at precisely 8:10 p.m. EDT, it's dusk here in central Ohio. Night falls half an hour earlier in Connecticut, some 600 miles to the east. An engineer on a curving right-of-way through a heavily-wooded area at night would have little or no chance to see persons on the track before it's too late....


Don't trespass on railroad tracks.

Joseph Lechner