Railroad Crossing

It's a nice shot. Exposure look pretty good to me. When a railroad crosses a road as appears to be the case here, is there nothing but warning lights to prevent cars from crossing. I can't see enough of the road to be sure but there looks to be no barrier. Thanks

Thanks, this was one of the better ones. It just seemed as though weird variable lighting -- old film? -- old camera? -- old photographer? -- caught up with me. The negatives were a bit thin and lackluster, but some much better than others.

Actually there is a (rather flimsy) gate at that crossing -- note the candy striped "stick" poking upward out of the frame near the supporting column. That is on a remote actuated gizmo that brings it down, drawbridge like, over the traffic lane. There's another set on the opposite side facing the traffic coming from the opposite direction.This was cropped in camera to sort of fill a vertically oriented composition, but those pipes heading out of frame to the left carry another set of flashing signals suspended directly over the traffic lane too.

All that said, there are some smaller country roads that cross that particular line at grade with just one of those X-shaped signs for a warning. With traffic on the order of 30 trains a day, some probably approaching 50 miles per hour or more, a bit of caution is a good idea! It's a two track line, so it's even possible for two trains to pass in opposite directions. Not specifically this line, but there have been cases in that situation where somebody shot across after the end of a train went by to find themselves in the cross hairs of another -- one of those underwear staining moments!

Thanks for the reply. In the old-days in the U.K. there were wooden gates that swivelled at 90 degrees that either closed the road to road traffic or closed railroad line to rail traffic. They might have stopped a car which had slowed too late to stop completely but would never have stopped a train even at slow speed.

In short, rail crossings remain more dangerous than they at first appear to be and these days with much lighter high speed front-cabbed electric trains an accident that posed no danger to a rail passenger in the days of steam pose dangers to both rail users and road users

Yes indeed, and those gates here have always been mostly psychological. This line is purely freight these days. 80 car trains of double-stacked containers, tank cars, and Zeus knows what, fly through. A car getting T-boned by that will generally come to rest about a half mile from the point of impact as the train finally stops (assuming it's not ground to bits).

Here in the US the consolidation of railroads into just a few major carriers has resulted in a lot of redundant rights of way becoming hiking and biking trails. The lines that are left carry amazing amounts of traffic. On a western wandering in 2016 I was on a highway paralleling a BNSF line in Arizona for about two hours during which I saw 9 huge freights going one way or the other.