WHEN TO CALL THE RAILROAD

[AlvinAZ]

My guess is that the rain shorted a detector or something in the control box somehow.

It was probably because of a soaked ballast condition...

x2 :)

On the SP we called the failure a "wet track circuit" and it'd shunt the voltage down
on the track so low the "4 ohm track relay" couldn't "pick up" by itself, you'd have to
jack-up the voltage a little at a time until it just-cleared. LOL :)

You could count on it happening if it rained (even just a little) after the track dept had
dumped fresh ballast, then only leveled it by scraping it even with the top of the rail.
Having the "work train" on your district was good for that business. ;)

And certain road crossings would develop it over-time if the roadbed was bad so the
train traffic could pump mud up. But sometimes it'd effect miles of track and several
track circuits too from the road bed getting mud pumped up into it. The longer the
track circuit the more sensitive to being shunted down they were.

Bad ballast conditions were tricky to maintain, when it was dry it was normal, when it
was wet they'd need the track voltage jacked-up to clear the crossing and the signals,
then you'd better check on it (and adjust it) every day as they'd dry back out again.

What a pain in the neck. I lucked out tho, the Roadmasters liked me and so would fix
a messed up crossing like that of mine as soon as they could. :) But a crossing like
that also tends to turn into a low spot pretty quick too tho, so it wasn't just for me. ;)

The Roadmaster's pet in AZ

[AlvinAZ]

As far as calling to report problems with crossings... do it!
You see something that don't look right to you, report it.

Alvin in AZ