Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

Crossings are failsafe
Condoms are not

That kid needs to watch out, he is not only trespassing, but destroying railroad property. When I was about 7, I was running along a line when the police caught me and gave me a firm lesson on trespassing. Boy did I learn from that!

I don't think it was malfunctioning though, the power probably went out there. Still I hope CSX finds this kid and fines him a lot of money. He purposely stole Railroad Spikes and destroyed railroad bonds, making it harder for CSX to repair it

Anyway, I give the video a

LARDLOGO wrote:That kid needs to watch out, he is not only trespassing, but destroying railroad property. When I was about 7, I was running along a line when the police caught me and gave me a firm lesson on trespassing. Boy did I learn from that!

I don't think it was malfunctioning though, the power probably went out there. Still I hope CSX finds this kid and fines him a lot of money. He purposely stole Railroad Spikes and destroyed railroad bonds, making it harder for CSX to repair it

Anyway, I give the video a

Alll it takes is two seconds for me to figure it out.
The crossing AC was knocked out, battery backup took over and ran out causing the gates to lower, by the time this kid got here the battery's were completely dead, IE no lights.

That little punk would have taken a beating had I caught him prying at my track wires and throwing rocks at them. Absolutely ridiculous. It is obvious from listening to him that he has mental issues, but the adult who drove him there, and sat there and allowed him to do that should be arrested for neglect at minimum.

...And orange paint on track wires? Thats absurd, orange paint is for derails and clearance points.... AREMA standards state blue is for electrical.

MD2020 wrote:...And orange paint on track wires? Thats absurd, orange paint is for derails and clearance points.... AREMA standards state blue is for electrical.

Agree, but that's CSXT for ya. I got into a major argument with a CSXT maintainer a few weeks ago over safe distance from the rail, got to love the CSXT supervisor there that told him off right after I did.

Kid.

He has no sense. At first, okay, he's inspecting the crossing. But then, the wild homo childous roams along the railroad tracks to inspect his unfamiliar surroundings with his usual stupid acts.


He needs some help. Hopefully CSX Police won't get to him before his parents!

Cheers,
Joshua

I remember lifting up a gate in my day, but I NEVER walked along tracks throwing objects at them trying to figure out a problem. It's SO obvious the crossing has no power. That's just plain stupid...

So I have to admit... once I did tamper with a crossing wire. In my defense, I was only 7 or 8 years old. It was the crossing next to my grandmother's house (which is one of the signals pictured in my avatar)... but at the time they were 8 inch lights and no gates. This was back in the late 70's.

The crossing had been malfunctioning the whole day I was there... the lights were stuck on. At the time, the crossing had no bell, so it wasn't really a nuisance except that she lived on a rather busy street and cars were sometimes stopping and waiting even though there was no train in either direction. This of course pissed off the people behind them to the point they would start honking their horns to get the other cars to go.

Like the kid in the above video... I got a bit curious and walked around a bit to see what might have been going on. I noticed that one of the wires had come completely off of the track... like the weld broke or something. So, I grabbed the wire and tried to put it back in place the best I could. I must have got it on the right spot because the lights shut off! I felt like I was superman or something. I wanted to tell my parents so bad what I had accomplished, but was afraid I would get in big trouble for messing with it.

About an hour or so later a train came. I did have that brief moment of panic that I screwed something up and maybe the lights would not come on at all and somebody would die. Thankfully... they came on like they were supposed to, but the train knocked that wire back off... so of course once the train passed the lights stayed on again.

By then it was almost dark and time for us to go home and we left. Not sure how much longer it took for the signal maintainer to come out and fix it.

cabman701 wrote:So I have to admit... once I did tamper with a crossing wire. In my defense, I was only 7 or 8 years old. It was the crossing next to my grandmother's house (which is one of the signals pictured in my avatar)... but at the time they were 8 inch lights and no gates. This was back in the late 70's.

The crossing had been malfunctioning the whole day I was there... the lights were stuck on. At the time, the crossing had no bell, so it wasn't really a nuisance except that she lived on a rather busy street and cars were sometimes stopping and waiting even though there was no train in either direction. This of course pissed off the people behind them to the point they would start honking their horns to get the other cars to go.

Like the kid in the above video... I got a bit curious and walked around a bit to see what might have been going on. I noticed that one of the wires had come completely off of the track... like the weld broke or something. So, I grabbed the wire and tried to put it back in place the best I could. I must have got it on the right spot because the lights shut off! I felt like I was superman or something. I wanted to tell my parents so bad what I had accomplished, but was afraid I would get in big trouble for messing with it.

About an hour or so later a train came. I did have that brief moment of panic that I screwed something up and maybe the lights would not come on at all and somebody would die. Thankfully... they came on like they were supposed to, but the train knocked that wire back off... so of course once the train passed the lights stayed on again.

By then it was almost dark and time for us to go home and we left. Not sure how much longer it took for the signal maintainer to come out and fix it.

The wire your talking about is a bond wire for the track circuit fyi

Future Darwin Award winner?