Missed it by *that* much
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When we rode the California Zephyr from San Francisco to Chicago, right after we crossed the Mississippi into Illinois, the conductor got on the PA and told us that our 3-hour late arrival is going to be further delayed because there's an issue with the crossing gates down the line. THey're not sure if they're all working.
Until the could be assured that the gates were functioning, the train would approach the crossing slowly, to see if the gates were down. If not, the train would stop and the conductor would de-train, walk to the crossing and stop traffic to allow the train to pass. Then, the train would stop again, and the process repeated. This adventure added about an hour and a half to our trip.
The scary thing about this video is that the sensors on the left, obviously didn't detect the oncoming train, but the ones on the right did, lowering the gates - too late.
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Funny story about a train crossing gate when I was in India, down in Chennai.
It was a manual gate, a person would have to raise and lower the gate by hand to stop the cars.
One time it was a long line of cars, and he was trying to lower the gate, but the cars would not stop to let him lower the gate, so the gate man had to take his flag and wave the train to a stop and let the cars clear before he could lower the crossing gates.
After that, I have seen him lower the gates way ahead of the train, just because there was a break in the cars, so he took the opportunity to do so!
