Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Black Friday and railroad crossings

How did your Black Friday shopping go? I looked a bit, but did not buy anything.

The weather now feels like winter. There was ice on the fountain at SJC this morning. There was also a stiff breeze making waves in the pond, which was not reflecting much of anything.
A day or two before Thanksgiving I noticed that new railroad crossing signs were being put up. The process was a bit like the railroad work in 2009. The signs were prepositioned along the tracks, and then a crew, which I never saw, erected them. The old signs posts looked sturdy, but one of the improvement is a vertical reflective strip on the back of the sign, making it stand out more at night. This is the crossing on Jefferson Street. One of the new signs did not get put up because its post broke. You can see it next to the old sign.
Below is the view from the other sign, and you can see that only one of the signs has been replaced.
On Mattheson there were four discarded signs. I am not sure where the extra two came from.
For some reason, I am interested in these things, though I suspect that many people are not. I am not interested enough, however, to have known the answer to all of the following questions: How many rail crossings are in Rensselaer? Which of them have flashing lights? Only those without flashing lights had signs replaced, so how many crossings were having signs replaced?

Late Update: I forgot to post answers. Only three needed to be replaced: Mattheson, Jefferson, and Scott. The other crossings (Cullen, McKinley, Franklin, Webster, and Melville, have lights. I think two of them also have gates.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The picture of St. Joe reflection pool makes a very nice wallpaper on my computer.

Anonymous said...

With such a RR crossing on McKinley, who wants to cross there anymore. Not safe for our vehicles!!

Anonymous said...

I lived close to that railroad crossing.