First: I'm not complaining about anything

I was just curious if there is any regulation on how long a train can tie up a major throughfare grade crossing during normal operations. i.e., switching or dropping cars where a portion of the train must be on the crossing.

One of my friends asked me this since he knew I was into trains.... I tried explaining I'm into model trains, and don't know about the real thing

thanks

Our rulebook says 10 minutes.

Andre Ming

When I lived in Chambersburg PA in the late 1960's, the Western Maryland went through the west side of town heading north, over several grade crossings on a curving, up-grade line.

The limit for blocking the city's east-west streets and US 30 (all of them, with a long freight) was 15 minutes. That was about the time it took for a 100+ car train with two units up front and two pushing on the rear to clear the city at about 20 mph. Sometimes the restored NKP 2-8-4 No.759 was used as a helper out of Hagerstown, working between fan trips.

The speed restriction was mainly due to some fairly tight curves within the city limits, as well as the track passing through the parking area of a shopping mall.

Because of emergency concerns for fire trucks and ambulances, the city passed an ordinance that a grade crossing could only be blocked for 5 minutes. It still took 10 minutes or more for most freights to pass through town. So one day the city police stopped a 100+ car train to issue a ticket to the engineer for blocking grade crossings beyond the city ordinance limit. And indeed it did.

The train stopped at the north city limit. For about an hour, all the grade crossings to the south remain blocked by the long train. The police issued their summons, the conductor called the dispatcher in Hagerstown to try to explain all this on a lineside phone and last, the time it took to get that train moving again on its way to Harrisburg. The city never tried that again.

Now trains passing through Chambersburg use the former PRR line to the east side. It was built in upon a 'Chinese Wall' with no grade crossings. The WM line is now a hiking and bike trail.

Ed Bommer

Yes officer, we've had the crossing blocked for more than 5 minutes, make the ticket out to the Conductor, he's the one calling the switching moves.

Gregg ....a retired conductor. No I've never received a ticket but probably should have.

A standing train in the states which I run thru (Ohio,WVa,Ky and Va.) I've been told 15 minutes.

A moving train no limit.

Run into a slow moving "Pokey Monster" (200+ car coal train), and it might take a while

Back in the early Fifties,at a PRR country grade crossing near Greensburg, PA, a train would sometimes, but not very often, block the crossing for almost an hour.

Eventually the locals called in the state police who ordered the conductor and engineer to break the train into two sections at the crossing to create a wide space to allow traffic to pass.

There was a big legal hassle with PRR about it but the state prevailed. In time, the PRR moved that tracks sideline signal farther down the line to accomate the longer trains which is what started the problem to begin with.

Ray

At the BNSF yard in Phoenix, the yard tracks merge just before the crossing of McDowell Road which is a major East-West road during rush hour. It's an older yard, fairly short and has no lead track.

The result is that the GP35's that do the switching (just recently fully replacing GP30's) end up blocking the road for long periods of time. Now that this thread came up, I suspect that they do follow the rules since the crews do occassionally pull the entire train North of the intersection to allow traffic to pass for several minutes before doing a few more reverse manuevers to pick up the next section of cars. It makes for some good train watching if nothing else.