Railway level crossings

ChumpusRex

peachyprice wrote: »

How is that going to be any quicker than the current level crossing? By the time the train has stopped, the cars have stopped and the train has started up an moved on the cars will have waited for the same amount of time.

It wouldn't. It would make the delay at level crossings far longer due to the slow acceleration of the trains. It would also do virtually nothing for safety, as nearly all LC incidents are people driving round the barriers, or pedestrians climbing over barriers.

The other problem is that the railway signalling system isn't that advanced. It isn't set-up to sense train speeds or confirm if a train has stopped. The whole railway system is designed on exclusion zones (called blocks). If a train is in a block, then the signalling automatically blocks any other trains from entering the same block. However, the system can only sense one thing - is there, or is there not a train present on a given block of track.

The same block system is used for the control of automatic level crossings. If a train enters the block surrounding an LC, the LC automatically closes. At the same time, the LC system has self-testing built in, if something in the mechanism shorts out, then the signalling system detects this, and automatically turns the signals to red on the approach to the LC.

In general, this system means that with an LC just past a station, the LC must close well in advance on the train's approach to it. There some ways around this, for example, imposing a very low speed limit on the track before the station, so that the exclusion zone around the LC can be very short - and this may be acceptable on short-hop commuter routes.


With manual LCs (typically found on small branch lines), the signaller for the line will typically activate the level crossing, before allowing trains through - the trains will be stopped at a red signal, pending operation of the crossing. The exception is non-barrier LCs, where any driver wishing to cross is expected to phone the line signaller to find out if a train is approaching. If one isn't, the signaller will turn the rail signals to red, and allow the motorist across. Once across, the motorist phones the signaller back, tells them they are across, and the signaller puts the signals back to green.

modsandmockers

peachyprice wrote: »

So the barriers stop the train, then more barriers stop the cars, once the cars have stopped the train moves on?

How is that going to be any quicker than the current level crossing? By the time the train has stopped, the cars have stopped and the train has started up an moved on the cars will have waited for the same amount of time.

No - the train stops first, whilst the road traffic continues uninterrupted. As soon as the train has stopped, the road barriers will come down, in order to stop the road traffic. The road traffic will immediately be able to see why they have been stopped, and will not be tempted to jump the crossing (as things stand at the moment, there is no indication of how long it will be before the train actually arrives, and therefore road users, especially locals, will be tempted to gamble on how much time they have to 'safely' ignore the signals). As soon as the road traffic has been stopped, the train will immediately proceed, and then the road will be immediately re-opened, causing very little delay to either the train or the road traffic.

jbuchanangb's report of a 4-coach train's failure to stop as planned from 64mph on the London to Hastings mainline makes extremely interesting reading, and more or less confirms that all sorts of safety and maintenance procedures were either inadequate and/or not correctly followed. The train's failure to stop was correctly recognised by the automatic level crossing in it's path, and the train was able to continue on it's way.

I repeat, yet again, that my ideas are solely related to slow-moving one or two coach trains on very lightly used branch lines.

Poor maintenance and unobserved safety procedures are in no way restricted to the railways, but jbuchanangb's link shows that the railways, at least in theory, have a comprehensive reporting procedure for every incident and every defect. Truck drivers who report a fault on their vehicle are quite likely to be told that if they don't like it, then their employer will soon find an agency driver to take their place.

modsandmockers

ChumpusRex wrote: »

It would also do virtually nothing for safety, as nearly all LC incidents are people driving round the barriers, or pedestrians climbing over barriers

It would do everything for safety, because motorists and pedestrians would have nothing to gain by behaving as you describe.

modsandmockers

wealdroam wrote: »

Yes, yes, yes. I pointed you to those figures.

I know they don't differentiate between 'mainline' and 'rural branch line' crossings.

Which is precisely why I asked you:

If you haven't got any, that's fine... just say so.

But do keep in mind that fatalities due to misuse are 'almost unheard of' on any level crossing.

I admit it - I have no proof about anything concerning railway fatalities. But I only ever seem to hear about level crossing fatalities on my local news, and they are almost without exception at little-used rural crossings. I can hardly remember any reports at all of drivers, cyclists or pedestrians getting in the way of mainline trains, except by choice.

ChumpusRex

modsandmockers wrote: »

It would do everything for safety, because motorists and pedestrians would have nothing to gain by behaving as you describe.

Except they would, because your method would result in the LC being closed for longer - as the train would be slowed down and take longer to cross. In addition, your system is more complicated and not failsafe. The normal automatic LC system is fail safe, because if a train approaches the crossing for any reason (even if it is out of control and skidding), the barriers automatically come down in plenty of time. In your system, if the train failed to stop, it risked going straight through an LC with barriers up.

This type of scheme *is* used at unmanned crossings on small branch lines. When a vehicle wants to cross, the car driver calls the signaller. If a train is already approaching, the car is told to wait. If there are no trains approaching, the signaller sets the signals to red, to stop any trains approaching. Then the car is allowed across.

Marco_Panettone

Can we see the letter you're sending to your MP about this issue please?

Pennywise

I have to agree with the OP re this. Bare Lane station in Morecambe is a classic case in point, where motorists and pedestrians regularly now have to wait five minutes or more for a 1 or 2 coach rural slow train that always stops at the station next to the railway crossing anyway so is going very slowly through the crossing. The wait wasn't so bad when the crossing was controlled by the signalman over-looking it, but last year the control was moved to a remote mainline signal control many miles away.

We now have a crazy system where the driver presses a button when he is ready to leave Morecambe station, which triggers the barriers immediately, even though the driver then has to get back in his cab, start up and drive the train a couple of miles to the crossing at low speed (not a fast line and no time to accellerate/decellerate), all the while, pedestrians and cars are stuck waiting for it, like I say at least 5 minutes.

It's made safety worse because all the locals now know how long they're going to have to wait and if the crossing starts flashing yellow or even red, they're more likely to try to jump the crossing.

The crossing is protected by a signal anyway, so there'd be no reduction in safety if there was a time delay on the press button at Morecambe, as a red signal would still protect the crossing if the driver somehow got there sooner, or alternatively some kind of detection device on the track closer to the crossing to trip the barriers and signal once the barriers were closed.

Coming the other way into Morecambe, the train has to stop at the station, before it gets to the crossing, so could easily have a press button operated by the driver when he's ready to leave the station to trigger the barriers to close.

It seems that Network Rail have redesigned the signalling and barrier control for their convenience and low cost, and to hell with the pedestrians and road users (who are in a majority compared to the handful of passengers on the train). Not to mention, trotting out elf and safety as an excuse to run roughshod over the pedestrians and motorists.

Not only are people more likely to jump the lights, it makes the local roads more of a rat-run as motorists turn round and go through residential streets to go over a bridge on a nearby main road which is quicker than waiting for the train to come!

Sometimes the unintended consequences make things worse!

timbo58

I still fail to see in 99% of all cases where a LC gate controlling a trains movement could be 'controlled' adequately by the flow of road traffic.

Take anywhere it's built up- like Brockenhurst for example -you'd have to have traffic light controlled and monitored flows of road traffic from at least 6 directions where roads can feasibly join to the LC, oops, I forgot the pub car park, oops again I forgot the 2 stations car parks, and the cafe and anyones house where presumably they can drive straight off their drive and onto the LC road.

The only LCs where it would be practicable to do this are those where only one route approaches them for at least a mile in each direction, no side roads, pubs, houses or shops.
I'm sure there are some but I can't name any.

As for dozens of roads user being held up for any minutes by very light flows of rail traffic on a regular basis - once again these flows and delays are monitored, any significant regular delay to road traffic would have been discussed and proposals put forward for re routing or building a tunnel/bridge.

I think this is all down to perception -if I am stuck in traffic for 2 minutes it feels like 10 etc.

I would agree with the last poster that in some isolated cases technology has not caught up on the railway signalling systems with the demands now from modern road traffic at LC's, and that does cause problems, I doubt it it's an attitude problem of NRs however.

jc808

Are you a rambler by any chance, op?

jbuchanangb

Sadly a driver lost his life due to his own impatience when he drove round the barriers at Athelney on 21 March 2013.
http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2014/report042014.cfm
Due to engineering work the previous night the barriers came down early for the first train of the day. But he should have waited.