About 15 min ago, I went out to get gas for my car so I could get to work tomorrow. As I turned the corner of my street, I saw that the Viall Ave 1 crossing was active with the gates down and an approaching train. As usual, the train started sounding its horn sequence. On the 3rd blast (the short one), I saw something I really didn't want to see - a car was approaching the crossing and not stopping. Sure enough, he went around the gates, causing the train engineer to sound the horn quite loud and longer than e shoudl have. I swear, the train was like 10-20ft away from the crossing. Talk about a close call...
Strangely enough, as I continued down 2nd Ave, I came to the Broadway intersection and suddenly that crossing came to life. Why, I have no idea because there wasn't a train anywhere near it (at least on that track). And no, the Viall Ave 2 and Park Ave crossings were not active...
Re: IDIOT!
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 8:53 am
by bnsflover
weatherdan882002 wrote: he went around the gates
WHY CAN'T PEOPLE GET THE MESSAGE!!! Trains kill people who are as careless as that!
weatherdan882002 wrote:Strangely enough, as I continued down 2nd Ave, I came to the Broadway intersection and suddenly that crossing came to life. Why, I have no idea because there wasn't a train anywhere near it (at least on that track). And no, the Viall Ave 2 and Park Ave crossings were not active...
Ooh... sweet! a malfunction!
Re: IDIOT!
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 11:08 am
by cabman701
I just witnessed another idiot this morning. I stopped to watch an NS train come through town and an older "modified" 90 something Chevy Caprice (with the huge rims and all that) with 3 high school aged kids inside ran around the gates probably about 5 seconds before the train hit the crossing.
The train was moving pretty swift... probably around 20 MPH.
If I only had my camera....
Re: IDIOT!
Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 9:04 pm
by weatherdan882002
cabman701 wrote:If I only had my camera....
That's what I thought when I saw my incident, hehe.
Re: IDIOT!
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 10:55 am
by csxrailfan2
Trust me, If you think its bad, you should see Saint Albans and Marmet, West Virginia to see how many idiots go around the gates.
Re: IDIOT!
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:27 pm
by AndyWS
Got a gate runner today at this crossing. fortunately the stupid EM signals have been replaced:
The Green Spur is in fact out of service, because the business it served moved. UP had even installed welded rail on the spur about 3 years before this happened.
Re: IDIOT!
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2011 7:48 pm
by weatherdan882002
weatherdan882002 wrote:Strangely enough, as I continued down 2nd Ave, I came to the Broadway intersection and suddenly that crossing came to life. Why, I have no idea because there wasn't a train anywhere near it (at least on that track). And no, the Viall Ave 2 and Park Ave crossings were not active...
The same thing happened again today! This time the malfunction was more lengthy and "involved". As I approached the crossing, I saw the gates going back up, and I thought "Here we go again...". About one second after the signals deactivated, they reactivated. I decided to go up to the gate and stop. The gates stayed down for about 30 seconds before going back up 1/4 of the way before instantly going back down. Fortunately for me, I hadn't even had the chance to let up on my car brakes. They stayed down for about another 30 seconds and then went back up. 5 seconds after they deactivated, they activated again. By this point I was already through the crossing and heard the bells ringing and looked out my mirror to see that they had activated.
IDK why, but for some reason whenever there's a westbound train on Viall Ave 1, the Broadway signals go crazy, even though Viall Ave 2 and Park Ave are unphased! The westbound fact also amazes me because the train is moving AWAY from the Broadway crossing. For the record, here's a map of the area.
