My wife and I took a bike ride this evening on the Portage (County) Bike and Hike Trail in Ravenna, Ohio. The trail is, in part, a partnership with the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad and runs alongside the W&LE right of way. I snapped this just because I found it interesting. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation, but one can easily imagine an angry neighbor who was awakened one too many times... Sent from my moto g(7) play using Tapatalk
"New" neighbors can be a pain. Shortly after WWII the USAAF transferred an airfield training base to Gulfport, MS. Over the next few years a desirable residential subdivision was established, and the base was converted to a commercial air terminal, Delta and Southern being its first customers. Within a few years the residents sued to have the airlines stop making so much noise. Sorry Folks, Why the Heck did you Buy a Home next an Airport?
I hear quite often of people complaining after buying a house next to the train tracks and being surprised that there were actual trains using the rails! If I overhear someone complaining, I usually offer a swap - my apartment for their house next to the tracks. Then there's the whole thing about our two airports, Dorval and Mirabel, the latter being opened to take the heavy traffic away from Dorval. Dorval is a close neighbor with several boroughs/towns and lots of people complain about the noise. Mirabel is now all but abandoned except for freight and all passenger flights are back at Dorval. And the complaints have spiked again...
Sad, because that whistle post is probably 100+ years old and is a piece of history. Mad, because if they uprooted it and then put it on the tracks in an attempt to stop trains, that's ridiculous. Glad, cause if the perpetrators are found, it's a federal offence and possible jail time if convicted. Probably can't hear a train horn from a jail cell.......
Thankfully, I was being silly and the most likely possibility is that some price of machinery backed into it while they were building the bike and hike trail. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-T377A using Tapatalk
The best way to get trolled by railroaders is to mess with us. Living near a crossing and flipping us off only makes us all really turn up the heat. Now I'm not saying this is "right" but..... we know the habitual middle finger guy and make a game of seeing if we can't get him out. I traveled the railway I worked for chasing seniority and found that most routes have a "Ole one finger". I don't know what these people think they are proving but a battle of one finger vs. 86 decibels of air horn only has one outcome. Working out West, we had a couple purchase a building lot with a view of the mountains and hire a contractor all online. Never saw the tracks in the process. Needless to say, they were upset about the noise and decided to do something about it. They went to the Roadmaster and asked to move the railroad tracks. LOL, they even had map of where they wanted the railroad to relocate. After laughing at them the Roadmaster told them if they would pay the estimated $13 million to build it they would gladly consider their offer. Back to flipping off the trains they went. Location, location, location, and look before you leap, must have been omitted from their life lessons textbook.
Yep, I do something similar while testing crossings. Occasionally there's the entitled jerk who starts shouting profanities at us because the gates are down. Well, that usually just earns him a reboot of the crossing predictor, adding another 90 seconds to his misery.
I remember when the "slat rats" up around Frasier and Winter Park, driving their turbo Snaaabs, were all up in arms about all the noise. The entities wanted us to stop blowing the whistle, word was they were gonna ticket engineers for blowing for crossings at grade, HMM. Well, It wasn't so much an echo of whistles, it might have been there were 3-4 locomotives, with somebody in each one blowing for the crossings. Sounded kinda like the old pipe organ things in the old circuses. I cannot confirm, nor deny this.
That would have been a treat to witness! Ticket away. Some city attorney didn't know the law. Not a single dime would have been paid, unless those cities had FRA-designated quiet zones. Otherwise, federal law requiring a horn trumps municipal code for grade crossing warnings every time.
Even if it is a "quiet zone" you can still whistle if needed. I usually ignore the quiet zone rules. If there is ONE pedestrian or ONE motor vehicle I'll sound the whistle. Most people got heads down looking at their phones anyhow.
