Unique Railroad Crossing request

[PerRock]

I normally don't put out request but I have an odd ball one. Norfolk Southern put a experimental crossing in near my town which has bollards that rise up out of the ground as the gates close. I am wondering if someone would be up to trying to make it?

Basically the yellow & red bollards are hidden below a level median and rise up with the gate. NS has since decided to remove them (or disable them) as they had issues with freezing in the winter.

pter

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Wouldn't they also have occasional incidents of car drivers being stabbed in the bottom by bollards if they happened to stop in the wrong spot?

:wave:

 

[Ronayne]

I think its a pretty good idea. If they could solve the problem of freezing, and place signs warning of the rising bollards there.

Or maybe some kind of weight/light sensor on each bollard to detect if there is a vehicle or obstruction above it.

~ Chris, :wave:

 

[pfx]

Wouldn't they also have occasional incidents of car drivers being stabbed in the bottom by bollards if they happened to stop in the wrong spot?

:wave:

Or people who try to beat the bollard. Hehe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Cw0QJU8ro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpkGvr2q3xw&feature=related

 

[mezzoprezzo]

~ snip ~ I am wondering if someone would be up to trying to make it? ~snip.

SpeedBollardz anyone?

 

[cascaderailroad]

Did you see the guy hit, and break the windshield, with his head in the last clip ?

Those bollars should be outlawed ! Dreamed up by some lamebrained, egg headed, idiot engineer. He should be sued, and imprisoned !

What if a whole family, or child, was killed by his retracting/stabbing bollards, when the unknowingly pop up right in front of a car, or a tanker truck full of gasoline.

 

[Ronayne]

Did you see the guy hit, and break the windshield, with his head in the last clip ?

Those bollars should be outlawed ! Dreamed up by some lamebrained, egg headed, idiot engineer. He should be sued, and imprisoned !

What if a whole family, or child, was killed by his retracting/stabbing bollards, when the unknowingly pop up right in front of a car, or a tanker truck full of gasoline.

I think its a rather good idea. I assume they would have signs which would be visible to all motorists.Therefore, any accidents between vehicles and the bollards would be the drivers fault. Unless they activated when they shouldn't, but I doubt they would do that. Maybe very, very rarely.

Just my opinion.

~ Chris, :wave:

 

[bnsf50]

The other problem you would have is the possibility of a car getting stuck between barriers. There would have to be sensors installed to take care of that problem.
They wouldn't be that hard to make for Trainz actually. If I were to make them I would make them stand alone and activated with an ATLS trigger. This way there would only have to be a couple of different models, one for 2 lane and one for 4 lane, etc. I would think that they should at least have a warning strip like this DANGER DO NOT STOP ON STRIPES PUNCTURE HAZARD

edit: added puncture hazard, most motorists understand this from parking lots. You are worried about them punching through a car or tanker. They could be made out of a heavy rubber instead of steel. The way most road pylons are made so that if a car runs over them they only do miner damage at the most.

 

[motorbreath]

It just seems like a much simpler and smarter thing to do is just have the gate cover both lanes. They really paid some goon to design that? I'm in the wrong line of work.

 

[pfx]

Did you see the guy hit, and break the windshield, with his head in the last clip ?

Those bollars should be outlawed ! Dreamed up by some lamebrained, egg headed, idiot engineer. He should be sued, and imprisoned !

What if a whole family, or child, was killed by his retracting/stabbing bollards, when the unknowingly pop up right in front of a car, or a tanker truck full of gasoline.

There are lighted signs all over the place around these type of things. If you manage to miss them and you're stupid enough to try and beat them, there's nobody to blame but yourself.

As for a tanker crashing, it's highly unlikely as they're only used in areas where speed limits are 30 or less (more often than not at the entrance to bus only/pedestrianised areas). The idiot who totalled their car was clearly trying to beat the bollard. The fact that he smashed his head on the windscreen will maybe be considered a painful lesson in using a seatbelt next time he drives.

No sympathy at all.

 

[PerRock]

for the middle (yellow) ones there is somewhat of a warning stripe. the Pavement changes color (probably concrete) and I believe is slightly raised up out of the ground.

However this begs the question, why having raising bollards all together? why not put a median in at crossings? I'm sure a nice median (maybe with some shrubs, a tree, etc) would keep people from crossing into the other lane to drive around.

peter

 

[bnsf50]

Like this? These work at the same speed as the crossing gates.