UNIVERSITY PARK, Ill. — Amtrak’s southbound Illini derailed Sunday evening after hitting a truck at a grade crossing near the University Park Metra station, about 30 miles south of Chicago. The driver of the truck was killed, according to...
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/07/29-truck-driver-killed-amtrak-illini-derailed-in-grade-crossing-collision
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
Part of having a modern infrastructure is having roads and major rails, especially passenger, totally separated.
Isn’t something that other passenger trains don’t take an alternate route around the accident? You sure roll the dice these days when you go by train.
Gramp Isn’t something that other passenger trains don’t take an alternate route around the accident? You sure roll the dice these days when you go by train.
The last detour that affected my travel came last fall when a forest fire in Utah made it necessary for the westbound California Zephyr to "go around the Rockies and not through them"--and we left Denver late in the afternoon insead of in the morning for several reasons, one being that it was afternoon before the decision was made to go across Wyoming instead of through the Moffat Tunnel.
I pity the people who were waked at Carbondale, and then had a 300 mile ride by bus to Chicago.
Johnny
We left the Big Boy exhibition at about 3:45 and had a choice of following 55 with Springfield traffic, or 57 with Illinis and perhaps a City of New Orleans. We went on 55, despite the GPS repeatedly trying to reroute us to the shorter route. It's possible we'd have been uncomfortably close to observing this firsthand; as it was, my son was following the Amtrak tracking system for the IC line at the moment it stopped updating.
charlie hebdoPart of having a modern infrastructure is having roads and major rails, especially passenger, totally separated.
Railroading has made is modern route infrastructure from the process of 'plant rationalization over the past half century.
Where, at one time you had five competing routes between the East Coast (NY & Boston) to Chicago - today you are down to two. Between other major O-D pairs you are for the most part down to one. Wall Street speaks.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Progress, ain't it great!!
That is a major -- and probably economically insoluble -- issue on the rebuilt Chicago-to-Springfield corridor as visible from I-55. This is all relatively flat land, with roads frequently parallel to the track, and a great many four-gate crossings on two-lane roads that couldn't possibly merit the investment in a full grade-separated overpass arrangement. Not one had 'bollards' up the center median, either, which may well be an operational concern with the probable extreme activation length (for 110mph) combined with the need to close the 'exit' gates later than the 'entrance' ones to prevent perception of trapping (as I think was a factor at Valhalla)
Gee, as a young guy I believed the US was the greatest nation in the world and there was nothing the "Greatest Generation" and later ones couldn't do. 50 years ago we got to the moon first in a seven year race. Now? We can't even have railroad right of ways safely separated from vehicles and disaster.
charlie hebdo Gee, as a young guy I believed the US was the greatest nation in the world and there was nothing the "Greatest Generation" and later ones couldn't do. 50 years ago we got to the moon first in a seven year race. Now? We can't even have railroad right of ways safely separated from vehicles and disaster.
CSSHEGEWISCH charlie hebdo Gee, as a young guy I believed the US was the greatest nation in the world and there was nothing the "Greatest Generation" and later ones couldn't do. 50 years ago we got to the moon first in a seven year race. Now? We can't even have railroad right of ways safely separated from vehicles and disaster. And now that the Cold War is over, we haven't been back to the moon for almost fifty years. Grade separation may not be advanced engineering but it can get expensive quite quickly. As pointed out earlier, simply closing many of these grade crossings may be unrealistic when the next crossing may be at least one mile away.
In the midwest, at least, the one-mile-apart road grid is a legacyog the 18th century Northwest Ordinance. In horse-drawn days, and snall family farms and villages, one mile was far. Now? Most of those small road grade crossingss should be closed. On the sorta-HSR route CHI-StL, many of those were closed and others have new, pretty formidable safety crossings.
charlie hebdo Progress, ain't it great!!
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