Ouch, I thought this only happens on train sets!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uIQLpH6g4gY
It can and does! Which is why I run on closed loops with no switches or grade crossings. I just set 'em up and sit back with a hot cuppa and watch 'em roll!
Better than therapy!
Just like going down the Interstate and going over a bridge over something. Bridge tends to be more stable than the approaches on either side and thus create a lurch getting on the bridge and a lurch coming off the bridge.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
It's what happens sometimes when you load the span of track in the crossing with heavy weight on the middle and ends of the ties. Changes the track modulus, like going from ballasted track suddenly onto a bridge with ties resting directly on longitudinal girders. Concentrates the 'snap' in the rails to a comparatively short length, which then wears weirdly or beats the ballast into a sag (where water can puddles silt accumulate, as nauseam...
Often complicated by short bolted connections either side of the 'buried' crossing, sometimes with CWR of deeper section on either side.
We had one grade crossing at the east end of the ex-Southern NS through downtown Collierville that was good for curling your hair to watch. We had long loaded coal trains with single DP trailing, often with GE locomotives with rollerblade trucks. When one of those hit the crossing approach, it would kick the back end of the pushing locomotive, the end unrestrained by the train, up in the air, and you'd see the trailing rollerblade axle drop right down to the bottom of the primary spring travel, then bang back up enough to visibly cock the truck frame for a moment. As near as I could tell, if that had been a leading axle in the truck it would have derailed...
Without being able to see (or) measure more:
(1) Subgrade condition
(2) Drainage under crossing failed or non-existant.
(3) Tie and crossing surface condition. (x-ing timber materials and ties rot out because the water under the crossing has nowhere to go. -big headache) ...Degrade much faster than the track around it.
(4) Impact damage from cross traffic, especially overweight trucks like concrete trucks and bobtail dump trucks, esp w/ poor approaches to the crossing.
(5) wonder what the give and take is like between the local road agency and the railroad. There are still plenty of cases out there claiming that you can rehab a crossing and still keep the road partially open (half and half)....never works (a fairy tale that needs to be done away with predjudice) ....oh the headaches and angst over taking a crossing out of service to surface or renew the rascal.
...where's the slow order? (pilot striking the top of rail indicates the deviation in profile under load is breaking the allowed parameters in 31 or 62 feet is well over the limit for anything above Cls 1 track)
Around here, we blame the highway guys for putting the smooth side down when they re-build a crossing.
We've got a crossing that's rough, but not like that.
I was waiting for a train one day when I noticed that there was a very sharp gradient between the ballasted track and a bridge. I'm talking 2-3" vertically, and it had been that way long enough that the track was bent vertically.
That was several years ago. I haven't checked back. Speeds through there aren't that fast, but it still had to be a bit of a jolt.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
In New Oxford, Pennsylvania, where the CSX crosses state route 30, the railroad had to repair the crossing twice in the last 10 years. The heavy trains going over the crossing and the wear and tear to the road which is very busy has made that crossing a real mess for cars. Your car jumps when going over the crossing due the rails moving when you go over the crossing and the uneven road surface.
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