History of "grade crossing" accidents

TURTLE 2 posted:

As I look at the old pictures of trains running through towns throughout the US, I wonder about the incidence of accidents that occurred in the past. In our town, Warren, PA the New York Central had tracks that ran down the middle of one of our busy streets. Yet I can't ever remember any accidents or people hurt of killed. There were fewer signs and warning devices I think. Syracuse had a main line that ran through the center of town. Is it may lack of memory, or were we more careful and aware of our surroundings?

Not only more "careful and aware of our surroundings", but absolutely NO distractions, such as "boom-boom" in car sound systems, smart phones, video games, etc.. Then again, there were probably a lot less people back then too.

Any stretch of track is vulnerable to the frailties of human judgement. Had a nice little restaurant adjacent to the Belmont station (Downers Grove, IL) on BN/BNSF, perfect for train watching and dining (well, not that fancy, make that "eating"). Then one morning there was an abundance of police activity and a body bag on the tracks - some poor soul woman had just committed suicide by train.

It's been a problem since wheels met rails.  Note the copyrights:

Rusty

I think people just had more common sense back then. 

TURTLE 2 posted:

As I look at the old pictures of trains running through towns throughout the US, I wonder about the incidence of accidents that occurred in the past. In our town, Warren, PA the New York Central had tracks that ran down the middle of one of our busy streets. Yet I can't ever remember any accidents or people hurt of killed. There were fewer signs and warning devices I think. Syracuse had a main line that ran through the center of town. Is it may lack of memory, or were we more careful and aware of our surroundings?

The track up 4th Avenue! Was there until the 90's sometime, right? Like you said, it was the remains of the DAV&P (NYC). I worked there (ALYRR) for a just about a year before moving on to another railroad...

The track ran up to North Warren to a lubricant bottling factory. We had a few fender benders on that branch, despite an escort of highrail trucks with flashing lights...lol.

Tom

SouthernMike posted:

I think people just had more common sense back then. 

Well, not really:

Rusty

Krieglok - you are correct. I will attach a picture from 1956 that shows the Ringling Brothers Train parked on these tracks on Fourth Avenue.

People will be people in any age or time! There are definitely more people today and more distractions, so the probability of tragic "contact" is MUCH greater!

TURTLE 2 posted:

Krieglok - you are correct. I will attach a picture from 1956 that shows the Ringling Brothers Train parked on these tracks on Fourth Avenue. 

Nice photo. The street made for a perfect unloading platform, I'll bet. Here is a truck I "unloaded" with one of my trains. The driver sat on the tracks in peasoup fog deciding which way to go as the gates came down...

Tom

Rusty Traque posted:

SouthernMike posted:

I think people just had more common sense back then. 

Well, not really:

Rusty

"Common sense is not so common."   ....Voltaire.

Always liked these two.

Don't know if the stats back it up but, it would seem like the many country roads with no signal would be more dangerous. I recall a number of crossings around my hometown of Lincoln Ne where it was extremely hard to see a train coming and no signal. That was many moons ago so don't know if those kinds of crossings are still out there.

Hot Water posted:

TURTLE 2 posted:

As I look at the old pictures of trains running through towns throughout the US, I wonder about the incidence of accidents that occurred in the past. In our town, Warren, PA the New York Central had tracks that ran down the middle of one of our busy streets. Yet I can't ever remember any accidents or people hurt of killed. There were fewer signs and warning devices I think. Syracuse had a main line that ran through the center of town. Is it may lack of memory, or were we more careful and aware of our surroundings?

Not only more "careful and aware of our surroundings", but absolutely NO distractions, such as "boom-boom" in car sound systems, smart phones, video games, etc.. Then again, there were probably a lot less people back then too.

Another thing to consider is that back then there were a lot more rail lines and a lot more trains.  People saw trains on a regular basis.  They knew how to act around them and what the consequences were if they got in their way. (I'm not going to say anything about the mandatory idiots)

Today there are fewer trains on fewer rail lines.  People may cross RR tracks on a regular basis and never see a train.  When one does appear, they have no idea of the physics involved and the danger present.  (I was here first, therefore, I have the right-of way!)

Tom

Tom Densel posted:

Hot Water posted:

TURTLE 2 posted:

As I look at the old pictures of trains running through towns throughout the US, I wonder about the incidence of accidents that occurred in the past. In our town, Warren, PA the New York Central had tracks that ran down the middle of one of our busy streets. Yet I can't ever remember any accidents or people hurt of killed. There were fewer signs and warning devices I think. Syracuse had a main line that ran through the center of town. Is it may lack of memory, or were we more careful and aware of our surroundings?

Not only more "careful and aware of our surroundings", but absolutely NO distractions, such as "boom-boom" in car sound systems, smart phones, video games, etc.. Then again, there were probably a lot less people back then too.

Another thing to consider is that back then there were a lot more rail lines and a lot more trains.  People saw trains on a regular basis.  They knew how to act around them and what the consequences were if they got in their way. (I'm not going to say anything about the mandatory idiots)

Today there are fewer trains on fewer rail lines.

There may be "fewer rail lines" by name, but all those other "fallen flag" rail lines got merged into what we know today as the Class one Railroads, i.e BNSF, NS, CSX, CP, and CN. Thus, those merged rail lines see far more trains that the old "fallen flag" lines ever did.

People may cross RR tracks on a regular basis and never see a train.  When one does appear, they have no idea of the physics involved and the danger present.  (I was here first, therefore, I have the right-of way!)

Tom

GVDobler posted:

Don't know if the stats back it up but, it would seem like the many country roads with no signal would be more dangerous. I recall a number of crossings around my hometown of Lincoln Ne where it was extremely hard to see a train coming and no signal. That was many moons ago so don't know if those kinds of crossings are still out there.

Oh yeah, especially when the corn is high.

Kent in SD

Tom Densel posted:

Another thing to consider is that back then there were a lot more rail lines and a lot more trains.  People saw trains on a regular basis.  They knew how to act around them and what the consequences were if they got in their way. (I'm not going to say anything about the mandatory idiots)

Today there are fewer trains on fewer rail lines.  People may cross RR tracks on a regular basis and never see a train.  When one does appear, they have no idea of the physics involved and the danger present.  (I was here first, therefore, I have the right-of way!)

Tom

I see that in my part of the country. Once busy fallen flag lines are abandoned, or extremely rarely used, and folks consider the crossing of them as a non-event.

Hot Water posted:

There may be "fewer rail lines" by name, but all those other "fallen flag" rail lines got merged into what we know today as the Class one Railroads, i.e BNSF, NS, CSX, CP, and CN. Thus, those merged rail lines see far more trains that the old "fallen flag" lines ever did.

 

In aggregate perhaps, but not at all true in all cases.  The old Frisco main near my home sees far fewer trains in a week than it saw in a day under Frisco ownership.  The Been Nuthin' Since Frisco doesn't use it for near as much traffic as the Fallen flag did.

GVDobler posted:

Don't know if the stats back it up but, it would seem like the many country roads with no signal would be more dangerous. I recall a number of crossings around my hometown of Lincoln Ne where it was extremely hard to see a train coming and no signal. That was many moons ago so don't know if those kinds of crossings are still out there.

When I was a grad student at Ball State University in 1978 we drove some of the back roads between eastern Indiana and Western Ohio.  There were lots of cornfields with roads through them that crossed tracks - no warning lights, no gates, just a wooden cross-buck sign.   I seem to recall that there were 110 track crossing fatalities that year.  I was very careful creeping up to crossing, checking both ways several times, and then darting across.

George

The reverse Darwin theory applies, for a million years the smart people were the survivors. Now the last 25 years, protected by ( fill in the blank),humans are becoming progressively more stupid. I submit this is evidence.

 

Hot Water posted:

There may be "fewer rail lines" by name, but all those other "fallen flag" rail lines got merged into what we know today as the Class one Railroads, i.e BNSF, NS, CSX, CP, and CN. Thus, those merged rail lines see far more trains that the old "fallen flag" lines ever did.

 

.

I should clarify what I meant by "Rail Lines."  I was referring to the actual routes, not the corporate entities that owned the track.  Think of how much track has been abandoned or removed over the years.  Granted, the lines that have survived the various mergers are seeing more traffic than ever before.  The point is that back in the day there were railroad tracks everywhere that were somewhat busy. Most people were exposed to trains to some extent.  Now there are fewer tracks that are much busier.  Fewer people are seeing more trains.  The rest don't have a clue.

Tom

When I saw the title of this thread; my first thought was “is this something else someone is attributing to Roman chariots?” 😉

Curt

In 1971, when I was a junior at UMass Amherst, which is located in the sticks of western Massachusetts, I was headed home Sunday night from a long weekend of heavy partying (and probably too much drinking) at a friend's place in Maine. I left a little after 2:30 AM and headed back to Amherst on the back roads (there weren't many multi-lane highways back then, anyway). Around 5:00 AM, I was about 8-10 miles from the campus when I hit a RR crossing and a freight train. It was pitch black outside. I stopped and shifted the 4-speed into neutral with the engine running, figuring it would only be a few minutes wait, but the freight cars just kept coming.

The next thing I remember was the sun blaring into my eyes and looking around to see sunshine everywhere. I couldn't figure out what happened for a second and then looked at the clock and it was almost 6:00 AM. I had fallen asleep while waiting for the train to pass with the engine running. Luckily for me, the crossing was at a dead flat spot and the car hadn't moved an inch.

I shoved the car in gear and headed to my apartment to change and get to class, but I always wondered how many cars/trains might have passed me by while I was sitting in the middle of the road. I guess someone was watching over me that night.

juniata guy posted:

When I saw the title of this thread; my first thought was “is this something else someone is attributing to Roman chariots?” 😉

Curt

Stop... Look...  Listen...

Rusty

Speaking of rail, road, and horses...

"When newspapers first began anti-street railway campaigns in the 1890s, attacking the newly electrified lines for their apparent callous indifference to life and limb, the arguments were couched in terms which strongly implied the horse [drawn] cars which preceded them were models of safety. They were anything but. Not two days after the Citizens' Railway began operations in 1859, a child was knocked down by a car and lost a leg. The first fatality followed a few days later, and from then on the grisly harvest of dead and maimed was a fact of life in street railway operations. ... Because people were killed or dismembered in ones or twos at the most, because it was the custom to leave young children unsupervised in the streets, because there were hundreds of more horrible ways to die, no one raised much of a fuss, any more then they raise today with all but the most stomach-churning of automobile accidents."

- Andrew D. Young, The St. Louis Streetcar Story  (Glendale, CA: Interurban Press, 1988) p.22.

So, yes, the horse found his way into the history of rail / pedestrian and rail / vehicle accidents, too. And it seems that even in the 1890s people thought that everyone was safer and more sensible in the past - and they were wrong then, too.

As has been noted people are people and the time period is of little consequence - poor decisions concerning things like grade crossings are time/place/period independent...consider just outside St. Louis back in 1884 for example - from the newspaper...

  A dispatch from St. Louis. October 25, 1884, says: "One of the funniest accidents that ever happened occurred to a special train of the Missouri Pacific road last night. The special runs only on Fridays to give residents of the Kirkwood area and nearby stations an opportunity to visit the theaters and other attractions in the city. Last evening the special left Union Depot at 11:30 with a very good load of passengers.  The train had just reached its regular gait when the passengers were suddenly thrown forward with great force.  Visions of a disastrous collision flashed through everyone's mind.  When none came the most active members of the passengers got off the train.  When they cast their eyes around they thought they had encountered a cyclone.  The remains of a two-story frame house was strewn about the track and over the forward cars. A number of people in very abbreviated garments and scared-to-death expressions of countenance stood around shivering in the cold while a flagman called out lustily for his red lantern.  After some confusion it was learned that an enterprising house-mover had undertaken to change the location of a house during the hours of night in which he calculated there would be no travel.  He had taken the precaution of carefully studying the time card to make sure that no regular train would be along.  As an added precaution he bribed the flagman with a bottle of "Robinson Country" to go down the track about 100 yards and flag any train that might appear. 

  With everything ready the house mover began his work.  So sure was he of the success of his planned efforts that he permitted the owners of the house, their two children, a servant, and six boarders, to go to bed unwarned.  Before getting the mansion on the track where a locomotive could strike it amidships, the mover, whose name is John Lloyd, found a little difficulty in the matter of telegraph wires which he promptly cut.  Then he got the house on the track. The watchman, in the meantime, had gone down the track and become so intimate with the contents of the bottle, that he couldn't tell a locomotive from a Congressman, and then the Kirkwood train came along."

This image dawned on me when I first saw this title...There was a very bad grade crossing accident near me in Valhalla, NY not too long ago (2015).

 Tom 

TURTLE 2 posted:

As I look at the old pictures of trains running through towns throughout the US, I wonder about the incidence of accidents that occurred in the past. In our town, Warren, PA the New York Central had tracks that ran down the middle of one of our busy streets. Yet I can't ever remember any accidents or people hurt of killed. There were fewer signs and warning devices I think. Syracuse had a main line that ran through the center of town. Is it may lack of memory, or were we more careful and aware of our surroundings? ?

Something like this town in Kentucky ?  ;-) 

To watch it live, make sure the red line at the bottom is all the way to the right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OE1aS91yvQ

The OP mentioned Syracuse NY, "The City With The Trains In The Streets".  In 1838 the Auburn & Syracuse built their tracks on Washington Street, south of the Erie Canal in Clinton Square to drive business closer to downtown.  In 1839 the Syracuse and Utica Railroad opened.  The depot was built in the middle of the road extending a full city block connecting both railroads.  By 1869 the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad double tracked the line.  From the days of the early iron horse straight through the days of the mighty Hudson locomotive, grade crossings were major safety and traffic concerns for Syracusans .

In the 1930's there were 68 regularly scheduled trains on Washington Street with an average of 90 train movements per day including special trains and local switching.  During the holidays, it only got worse with as many as 125 train movements a day.  On the West Shore there was another 33 trains a day.  Train speed was limited to 15 miles per hour and so a train of 12 to 18 passenger cars would block several north/south grade crossings all at once.  There were 62 grade crossings total with a crossing guard posted at every one.

In 1936 there was great jubilee by all Syracusans when the trains were removed from the streets forever by the building of a brand new elevated double track passenger mainline using the original route of the West Shore Railroad through the city.  This "Grade Crossing Elimination Project" employed many workers through the Great Depression.  Syracuse's forth of five rail passenger stations built by the New York Central saw the most traffic during World War II.    The decline of passenger rail traffic rendered the elevated system obsolete by the 1960's and all New York Central passenger rail traffic through city was rerouted north on the old freight line where it still is today.  In 1962 the great New York Central Railroad built their very last passenger station on the east side of Syracuse where it was used up until 1998.  That same year a new Rail/Bus Regional Transportation Center opened.  Ironically, this modern facility was built exactly where some community leaders tried to get the New York Central to build a new station back in 1936 to eliminate the trains in the streets of Syracuse.

All this and much much more, including a nearly identical story about the Delaware Lackawanna & Western Railroad also running in the streets of Syracuse will be found in our Central New York Chapter, NRHS Inc. published book now in its forth edition, second printing....

New 4th addition, second printing commemorating 75 years since Syracuse was "The city with trains in the streets!" Written by Richard F. Palmer with photo's and research by several people of the Central New York Chapter, National Railway Historical Society. 48 pages of color and black & white photographs. Features a 2-page spread satellite view of Syracuse with an overlay of all street level tracks as they existed in 1925. Published by the Central New York Chapter, National Railway Historical Society, Inc. in 2011.  AVAILABLE IN OUR STORE.  THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT.

Next time at Strasburg, take a look at Great Western #90.  We are lucky to have her still with us...about 1940 a tractor/trailer tried to beat her to a crossing.  I think it killed the trucker, but put #90 on the ground and killed the fireman.  #90 had to be rebuilt.

Richie C. posted:

Always liked these two.

80 tons? Where did they come up with that tiny number? A single diesel locomotive weighs around 200 tons. NKP 765 weighs 404 tons.

A typical freight train would weigh 8,000 tons.

OGR Webmaster posted:

Richie C. posted:

Always liked these two.

80 tons? Where did they come up with that tiny number? A single diesel locomotive weighs around 200 tons. NKP 765 weighs 404 tons.

A typical freight train would weigh 8,000 tons.

That's what happens when people write about things that they have no knowledge about.

Stuart