Friends of the Rail Forum

This street-running scene looks for all the world as if the train driver has parked next to the red car to pop in to Kuppy's Diner for a quick bite...

Thats one of the things that amazed me about America, trains running down the main streets seemingly without any safety measures in place. (and stopping for a bite along the way)

I was also amazed at how passenger trains stopped in one-street mid-western towns and completely blocked the level crossings for ten or fifteen minutes, yet nobody seemed to complain. Of course in many of those towns there was only one passenger train a day in each direction (or less), so I suppose people got used to it. Also a lot of freight shunting moves seemed to involve blocking crossings in industrial areas for ages, even in quite big cities.

Read a story the other day about a woman shopping with her kids. Came out of a shop and the kids ran across the street.

At which point a rather long train arrived. After some 15minutes of delay etc the train had disappeared and so had the kids!

(But being a rather small town they were soon found!)

Sounds about right!

About 15 years ago I remember I was in Spokane, WA, and was going with a couple of US friends to a fairground or something similar. We were driving through a part of town that was semi-industrial and we got stopped at a level crossing where a long freight train was pulling forward, setting back, pulling forward, setting back, etc, without ever pulling clear of the crossing. Each time it moved my friends thought it would pull clear, but it didn't, and after about half an hour they got impatient and suggested we turn round and find an alternative route. They couldn't understand why I was so happy just watching this train pulling forward, setting back, pulling forward, setting back...