Such situations would rarely, if ever occur in real life, since the road requires a shoulder of a specific width and dimension, as does the railroad's ballast line and clearance requirements.
However, a prototype approach to the problem might be to place amber or red flashers up the hill, nearer to the camera, with a yellow warning sign reading "Railroad Crossing X feet ahead" and/or "Do not Cross Tracks When Flashing". The sign could be to the right of the road, or suspended overhead.
The other option would be to widen the road on the left side to accomodate an island, and place a magnetic watchman on the island with the same or similar sign up the hill.
You are correct: there is no room for the flashers without serious modifications.
Cantilever signal bridge anchored to the left of the road, signals directly above traffic lane. Yellow pre-flasher far enough in advance of the signal to permit a safe stop with normal braking.
Yes, there are places where this occurs. The one I'm thinking of, the road and railroad are shoulder-rubbing through a steep-sided gorge and hit a solid obstruction. The road had to cross a bridge to the other side, the railroad had to tunnel and the rock won, two out of three. (The third, the river, barely deviated - but the cliff was vertical from the water to well above the railroad.)
Since it's in my prototype area, I might model it once scenery-building begins.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
kgrigsbyI'm having trouble figuring out where to put crossing signals on one spot of my HO scale Woodland Scenics River Pass layout kit. I'm using the NJ International signals (lights only). The area between the RxR and the track is too narrow to have them face up the hill. Any suggestions? Would such a situation ever occur in real life?
That scenario looks just about identical to the CSX crossing on Bradner Road on the south side of Bradner, Ohio, north of Fostoria (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=fostoria+ohio&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=45.418852,78.75&ie=UTF8&ll=41.317045,-83.437192&spn=0.005286,0.009613&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=41.317126,-83.437192&panoid=Ak6aSTdFomtXnxm-2ytD6g&cbp=12,353.4716159344757,,0,5.100446428571429). Back in the 1990s, there were just the two signals located on the left sides of the approaches to the crossings. Looks like they've added a couple more on the right sides of the approaches a little further back since then. What makes that crossing confusing is that there are no stop lines to tell drivers which signal to stop at.
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
I know of several spots just like this. They just move the signals up the hill with well marked stop lines. Of course the signal is activated much sooner to make up the distance to the tracks. In one case there is a 30' concrete retaining wall down one side much like the rock face on your layout. They mounted the lights on a steel rod drilled into the concrete sticking out over the road. You could drill a rod into your rockface and do the same thing. Like they say in the real RR world "whatever works"
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
kgrigsbyThanks everyone for your ideas. I found them all very interesting. I've gone ahead and implemented the solution Kevin posted from Bradner, Ohio. I already had the crossing signals and it was the easiest to implement and seemed like a perfect fit. Ken
Glad I was able to help. I actually found that crossing by accident. When I moved from Tiffin to Bowling Green to attend BGSU, I was always taking SR 53 north of Tiffin to US 6. I'd then take the same route whenever heading home on breaks since I had to go through Tiffin to get to Bucyrus. Not long afterwards, I started going through Fostoria since it was a shorter driving distance, although when going through Fostoria, I took the side streets so I could get a chance to wait on a train or two.
On one of the trips of my original route, I was heading east on US 6 and had just crossed over the CSX ex-C&O route and had seen a southbound hopper train approaching. I turned south at the next road and found myself in Bradner at the crossing I'd linked to. The signals hadn't come on yet so I went across, turned around, and came back as the signals came on. It was pretty eerie waiting at that crossing with the road so close next to the tracks like that. But when I saw the photo on the layout above, the crossing in Bradner was the first thing that popped in my head.