There's a lot of historic accounts of railroads having legal and physical battles when one attempts to build across another at grade or by bridging. Here I'm interested in diamond maintenance. This seems to occur every few days at Rochelle for instance and must be very expensive. Maintenance time slots are allocated, but what about costs and reponsibilities?
I visit Railstream's Fostoria West PTZ cam almost daily and like their 8am-5pm zoom on the CSX-NS diamond. I often see a black and white cat crossing on it's morning routine. Last week I watched an NS machine that appeared to be grubbing up ballast under their ties, presumably to raise the track and improve their own train performance over the crossing. Today I saw eastbound CSX power wobbling pretty radically immediately after crossing. Trailing double stacks were not affected, perhaps because of less concentrated weight. I'd guess NS's work resulted in a CSX soft or floating spot.
Is there a certain amount of selfishness going on? How are these things resolved or is it just the other guys problem now?
Rick
rixflix aka Captain Video. Blessed be Jean Shepherd and all His works!!! Hooray for 1939, the all time movie year!!! I took that ride on the Reading but my Baby caught the Katy and left me a mule to ride.
Diamonds almost always are subject to an agreement. That agreement spells out who installs, who maintains (and up to what limits), and who pays for what. It should also spell out who has the right to dispatch trains across the diamond and priorities in dispatching. Dispatching usually means responsibility for signaling, too.
Each diamond crossing requires a unique agreement, so YYMV. Unfortunately, things change over time, so you end up with situations where a quiet branch line is the preferred, prioritized route with a green signal, versus the other guy's busy mainline looking at reds all day.
So from what you saw, it would appear NS has responsibility to maintain the diamond, but most on-track equipment cannot reach to the side, so they may only be responsible to the end of their ties (projected through the diamond area) on the CSX line. Not much you can do beyond that, even if it does look like it is a case of screw your neighbor.
For every situation where A is the controlling/responsible entity, there's probably another where B holds the cards. Now that we're down to a few Class 1's, this will happen much more than when there were 100 Class 1's. So you probably end up with a "you scratch my back, etc" situation.
I believe the first railroad generally holds the second railroad responsible, since they were the ones who wanted to cross an existing line. Like labor agreements, this can get complicated with all the mergers, etc.
I'd hate to see the agreements for those diamonds (as in Chicago, for one) where there were four lines crossing in a veritable jigsaw puzzle.
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...
....and then there is all the horse-trading that goes on after the original agreement is in place (politics)...The larger railroads have people assigned to manage the terms and conditions.
The common name used is 'Joint Facilities Agreements'.
Much can change as the RR's business changes. An Agreement with which MC and I are familiar is the 'Joint line' between Denver and Pueblo involving the D&RG, AT&SF and the C&S which was created when the USA took over operation of the Railroads in WW1.
The arrangements may not always be consistent. Based strictly on observation and conversations, at Hammond crossing (IHB over NKP, Erie & Monon), IHB was responsible for the maintenance of the diamonds, which were in the middle of Hohman Avenue while Monon provided the crossing watchmen.
Back to Fostoria, where CSX inspectors are checking out the soft spot I observed the other day.
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