Mutant validation
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Hah, I actually lived in downtown Grrr for several years, next door to the (then-) mayor.
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We have two Main Streets, one on either side of the railroad tracks that go right through the middle of downtown.
Sometimes, they park so that the train blocks half of the intersections in town making it impossible to go anywhere without driving out of the city.
SC has some special, special city planners.
It's called "your town got built around the railroad tracks in the first place". It's a common urban planning anti-pattern across the US. Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done about it save for either:
- not ever parking a train there, which sometimes is impossible to avoid due to Hours of Service laws forcing the dispatcher's hand on crew change points, yard/terminal congestion, breakdowns on the mainline up ahead, train lengths and/or weights making meets infeasible at other places, or a variety of other things.
- having the train cut the crossing (i.e. split the train in two with one half on one side and one half on the other), which is a time-consuming pain in the rump for the train crew as unless the crossing is fitted with an air hose, they have to retest the brakes when they couple everything back together. (Never mind having to put a hand brake or three on the uncoupled cuts to keep them from rolling off, then knock the handbrakes back off again when the train's being put together.)
- or building a grade separation somewhere in town so that the railroad can do as it pleases without completely snarling traffic in town. This tends to be quite expensive, though, as sending the railroad over the street is very costly in terms of the amount of fill required to keep grades acceptable for trains atop the cost of railroad bridges (which need to be more robust than what you find on the Interstate due to the high axle loads involved), and sending the street over the railroad can be done with much less fill, but requires care (a good 22-23 feet of it at a bare minimum) to avoid creating a clearance obstruction for high railcars (such as double-stacked containers and autorack cars).
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On the other hand you then get the anti-pattern here in the UK where most towns and whatnot predate most of the rail network.
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3. or building a grade separation somewhere in town so that the railroad can do as it pleases without completely snarling traffic in town. This tends to be quite expensive, though, as sending the railroad over the street is very costly in terms of the amount of fill required to keep grades acceptable for trains atop the cost of railroad bridges (which need to be more robust than what you find on the Interstate due to the high axle loads involved), and sending the street over the railroad can be done with much less fill, but requires care (a good 22-23 feet of it at a bare minimum) to avoid creating a clearance obstruction for high railcars (such as double-stacked containers and autorack cars).
Yay, DiscoList numbering.
Or keep the rails at grade and dig the road under it. Relatively cheap, but prone to flooding during heavy rainfall.
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Or keep the rails at grade and dig the road under it. Relatively cheap, but prone to flooding during heavy rainfall.
I did forget about this sub-option, yes. It is the cheapest option if the railroad is already embanked, which is not true in many towns/cities. As you mentioned, such underpasses tend to flood in heavy rain conditions. They also become an urban nuisance due to the difficulties of maintaining acceptable pedestrian paths and lighting in an oft-wet environment that takes a beating from freeze-thaws every winter in climates where that's an issue. Also, you have to be a bit careful here as you either
- wind up basically sticking a giant culvert under the tracks, which if done wrong can lead to a recurring track geometry defect (due to the roadbed around the culvert not consolidating to the pre-culvert profile, but to some other profile that puts a bump, dip, and/or twist in the track), which railroads hate,
- or you wind up having to have the railroad build a bridge, which is just as expensive as any other railroad bridge.
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This tends to be quite expensive, though
Just park the train through middle of everything every day. The city will work out the rest.
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Damn CoD campers.
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The city will work out the rest.
If only they could do that without screaming in the ear of the train dispatcher...
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Well, in the town we were talking about, there's at least alternatives--go out of the city center, such as it is.
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Well, in the town we were talking about, there's at least alternatives--go out of the city center, such as it is.
Just be glad that you don't have a major at-grade interlocker in your town, such as what Ft. Worth went through until now with Tower 55 (it was just upgraded to improve capacity).
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Just be glad that you don't have a major at-grade interlocker in your town, such as what Ft. Worth went through until now with Tower 55 (it was just upgraded to improve capacity).
That's the crap just east of the convention center, right? I live in Dallas and I don't get to FW very often but I'm mildly familiar with it.
I don't think I've ever lived anywhere that didn't have at-grade crossings that occasionally blocked major roads. Every once in a while, for example, although I haven't seen it in a few years, some joker gets the bright idea of cutting off Belt Line road in Addison.
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Aside: I love how they call 'em the D & FW Mixmasters. Always makes me think of Tremors.
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That's the crap just east of the convention center, right? I live in Dallas and I don't get to FW very often but I'm mildly familiar with it.
Aside: I love how they call 'em the D & FW Mixmasters. Always makes me think of Tremors.
Not sure where your convention center is, but Tower 55 is pretty well tangled up with the FW Mixmaster, which is one of the reasons it's such a bear to fix.I don't think I've ever lived anywhere that didn't have at-grade crossings that occasionally blocked major roads. Every once in a while, for example, although I haven't seen it in a few years, some joker gets the bright idea of cutting off Belt Line road in Addison.
Amazingly enough, I live in a city where the mainline was fully embanked when it was first put in over 100 years ago. So, we basically never have issues with trains snarling up our entire city.
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Not sure where your convention center
I was talking about the FW convention center, because you were talking about Tower 55.
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I was talking about the FW convention center, because you were talking about Tower 55.
Right. I think it's near there, but don't quote me since I don't live out that way and have never been there.
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Right. I think it's near there, but don't quote me since I don't live out that way and have never been there.
Oh! I thought from context you did. Nothing else I said about DFW makes much sense if you don't have at least a passing familiarity with the geography.
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Amazingly enough, I live in a city where the mainline was fully embanked when it was first put in over 100 years ago. So, we basically never have issues with trains snarling up our entire city.
Where I live, almost all rail routes run below roads at crossings, and of the rest, 90% have the railway on a bridge. It turned out to be easy to do these things round here due to the way the valleys are shaped, especially as they're still well above the local river. (In fact, I can only think of two at-grade crossings within about 20 miles, and one is just a minor farm track.)
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All fair points regarding the rails; my beef with the city planners has more to do with how roads work elsewhere in the state, though it would be nice if they had bothered thinking out the rails on Main more. There is enough space that the track could be diverted, and this has been a proposal before (almost a decade before I moved here), but they couldn't make anyone pay for it.
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Or keep the rails at grade and dig the road under it. Relatively cheap, but prone to flooding during heavy rainfall.
And heavy rainfall is enough to turn E. Main Street into a tiny river; if there were underpasses like that, they'd basically be small lakes for weeks at a time.
