Carroll Road Railroad Crossing

This crossing, Carroll Road, sits between Oaklandon and Fortville, Indiana. It is also on the county line dividing Marion and Hancock Counties.
Indiana State Road 67/U.S. 36 runs parallel to the tracks here. It was upgraded from two to five lanes recent to this video.
I've included a series of images at the beginning of this video, but shortened the time for each to make room for each video clip. I figure you can pause if interested in longer viewing.
You might notice at one point the traffic signals go in to flash mode during the train. INDOT was working on improving the timing for the track clearance interval, and made them do that for just one day.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Carroll
• Road
• oaklandon
• fortville
• indiana
• csx
• conrail
• train
• rail
• crossing
• street
• road
• highway
• light
• gate
• traffic
• signal
• bell
• grade
• horn
• railfan
• led
• preemption
• rr
• xing

[rpmangin]

5:45 - 5:48 The signal appeared to jump from green to red, with no yellow? I'm not sure it's supposed to do that, even during preemption. If it is, then that's bad engineering.

6:39 You can notice the left turn signal is green for northbound Carroll Road traffic, but the through traffic light remains red. That is an improvement over most preempted signals, which simply give a red signal indication for the cross streets when a train is present.

[wisecrac99]

@rpmangin, go to 5:40 and watch the silver car in the bottom left of the screen. It will explain why the traffic light went from green to red without the yellow. :)

[Bookof1998]

were they testing the crossing?

[wisecrac99]

@Bookof1998

If you are refering to the picture with the workers, they are wiring in the new signals. The lights aren't flashing in the picture, just on steady on that one side. I beleive they are checking the wattage/voltage.

[computersmasher]

what kind of timing issues did they have

[wisecrac99]

As you may have noticed, they have two sets of lights for traffic crossing the tracks. When a train is approaching, the first set go red and the second set go green to clear traffic off the tracks, but they were returning to red too soon. If they turn red before the train gets there they could trap someone on the tracks. They've taken it to a bit of an extreme now, as it's now quite a long wait for cross traffic.

[millenniumman75]

That's one of the big things I like about northern indiana - the trains! I like to see and hear them :).

[carbon2983]

@rpmangin the traffic light looked blue 2 me.

[TheZeke1974]

LOL at dog howling in background.

[storm24awesome]

great video