Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

There is a big controversy brewing here in Springfield regarding high speed rail going basically straight through downtown. They are talking about permanently closing quite a few crossings and building underpasses and overpasses... and the dreaded quiet zones.

As part of a front page story in Thursday's paper, a crossing signal pretty much spanned the entire front page. Here is what the front page looked like, I yanked this off of the newspaper's website: Here is the crossing signal on Street View that was used in the picture, which is one of the crossings they are proposing to put a overpass at:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 82,,0,9.87

And finally, if you are interested, here is a link to the entire newpaper article with plenty of reader's comments at the bottom. I don't know for how long this article will be available on line... if the link goes dead, I will have to edit this part out:

http://www.sj-r.com/homepage/x157472130 ... n-closings

I can see the part about closing a few crossings, but trying to build 9 over/underpasses does seem a bit excessive and costly.

There are no gateless crossings, all are gated, including the one-way crossings, and all have 12"x20 and 12"x24" lights. I don't really see where the town needs to do anything period. High speed trains will only mean average interruptions of only 30-45 seconds. That isn't that long to wait.

Speed may be limited a little bit, but 55-70 MPH should work for the new high speed trains.

i agree. its really unnecessary for all those bridges.

Smjh1979 wrote:I can see the part about closing a few crossings, but trying to build 9 over/underpasses does seem a bit excessive and costly.

There are no gateless crossings, all are gated, including the one-way crossings, and all have 12"x20 and 12"x24" lights. I don't really see where the town needs to do anything period. High speed trains will only mean average interruptions of only 30-45 seconds. That isn't that long to wait.

Speed may be limited a little bit, but 55-70 MPH should work for the new high speed trains.

there talking about HIGH SPEED TRAINS not 70 mph but 130 mph
but what i dont get is springfield amtrak station is RIGHT THERE they have to stop there anyways
why close all the xings

Crossingman is correct... the trains will still have to stop at the Amtrak station, so the trains would not be able to go full speed through town.

The other part that really perplexes me is that they are talking about having an overpass replace one crossing, but leave another crossing open which is just a block away. That is impossible... unless they plan to have it look like a roller coaster ride.

If their going to have the tracks go up and down 4 or 5 different times, they might as well throw in a couple of loopty loops too! And don't forget the barf bags.

cabman701 wrote:Crossingman is correct... the trains will still have to stop at the Amtrak station, so the trains would not be able to go full speed through town.

The other part that really perplexes me is that they are talking about having an overpass replace one crossing, but leave another crossing open which is just a block away. That is impossible... unless they plan to have it look like a roller coaster ride.

If their going to have the tracks go up and down 4 or 5 different times, they might as well throw in a couple of loopty loops too! And don't forget the barf bags.

YOU MEAN TRAINMANKIGHT
yah that roller coaster might drum up some more business

unless the trains can go from 0-100 in 3.4 seconds, they will be going slow through the city. I still havent heard anybody in Springfield ask " whats wrong with the current Amtrak?" it is 4-5 passenger cars, and a P42DC, with a 79 MPH speed limit, which it almost never reaches. There is an article in the May 09 issue of Trains talking about this line, here is some of what it says: There is Freight congestion in Joliet with 10-25 MPH speed limits, Down Near Normal Crews must flag all grade crossing when on a siding beacuse of Rusty rail. and trains can only go 25 MPH through springfield beacuse of "street running", it does say that they can go 40 through town when cab signals are installed. Also around springfield there are some passing sidings, but i havent ever seen amtrak use them, and the trains that do use them can only do 10 MPH. Further south they use track with TRRA and KCS. If you want to go faster than 60, eliminate the cluster. I read in the paper that some people want to eleivate the track and run up to 250 MPH!!

The high speed rail saga continues... quite a few articles have appeared in our local paper on this subject. If anyone is interested in more on this subject, you can go to our local paper's website at http://www.sj-r.com.

Of interest is the below photo that has appeared several times now. This crossing is just north of Sherman which is about 10 miles north of town. Pretty much all the signals between Chicago and Springfield have this set up now with 4 quad gates. I'm not sure why they choose to install one set of lights on each signal with an extension, but they are all like that.

Sorry for the fuzzyness. I had to blow the photo up a bit, all they had was a small version on the web site.

No matter how fast, people should just obey the signals. That's about it. If they get smashed to bits being hit by a train at 150 MPH, it's their own fault for not having common sense. Just my .