5 & 6 Rare Mileage?

[pebbleworm]

It's been a while since I've been in the area, but there is an ancient ruin of a railway bridge between Wever and Fort Madison on the Skunk River. The current line runs little bit east of that. Traffic really creeps along that stretch of track, with a lot of squeaks and groans- at least it did 15 years ago. I was thinking of taking the train to Burlington in early March- hopefully the detour and bridge problems will be over by then.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

No horn on that UP engine, or what?

Ocala Mike

Ames is a quiet zone.

Would that make it dangerous for grade crossings?

 

[GregL]

It's been a while since I've been in the area, but there is an ancient ruin of a railway bridge between Wever and Fort Madison on the Skunk River. The current line runs little bit east of that. Traffic really creeps along that stretch of track, with a lot of squeaks and groans- at least it did 15 years ago. I was thinking of taking the train to Burlington in early March- hopefully the detour and bridge problems will be over by then.

The ancient ruin that you see is the remnants of an old hiway bridge across Skunk River. BNSF did alot of work to the railroad bridge across the Skunk last summer. They had a slow order for trains crossing that bridge. I know because I live 2 miles south of that bridge and I heard all of of the slack in the coal cars as the trains slowed down for the bridge. I believe the speed limit is 40 mph now. Having said that, I can recall of several derailments on that line between Burlington and Keokuk,Ia over the last few years. Maybe it's not that good!

GregL

 

[Agent]

No horn on that UP engine, or what?

Ocala Mike

Ames is a quiet zone.

Would that make it dangerous for grade crossings?

Supposedly not since the yellow concrete median visable in the video is there to make it impossible for cars to drive around the gates. All but one of the crossings in Ames have concrete medians. The one that doesn't has a quad gate that blocks all the lanes on both sides of the tracks. I have personally seen two cars drive around the median and the gates at the crossing in the video, although in that case the gates were down because they were malfunctioning, not because there was a train coming.