ac6000cw
Established Member
That's my understanding too.Sort of, except instead of the locomotive being an electro-diesel the pantograph (and I presume transformer) are on the carriage.
I think it's just historical evolution - like most countries (the UK being a major exception), when railways were first built in the US, no fencing and open crossings were the norm, hence the practice of using the whistle/horn as a warning. Over time in the US, with increasing speeds and frequency of both road & rail traffic, some of the busier crossings got 'flagmen' stationed at them (the equivalent of a crossing keeper). Then when technology developed in the early 20th century the 'flagmen' slowly got replaced with automated crossing warnings starting in about 1910 e.g. the 'magnetic flagman' wig-wag in the photo below at a museum (the red lamp swings side-to-side and the bell tolls). But the rules about sounding the whistle/horn remained. Whereas in the UK we replaced fully gated crossings (which didn't need whistle/horn warnings) with automatic crossings, so I assume we just carried on the historical situation re. trains sounding an audible warning.Yes - it staggers me every time I go there and see the juxtaposition of level crossings and road junctions, etc. US rail safety culture is very different - take, for example, the four horn blasts code for a train approaching a crossing - this is something that the UK has not adopted (there is no mandate to sound horns for AHBs here, unless specifically stated), yet, even in urban areas, a large proportion of railways in the US are unfenced - contradictions are everywhere.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/C4BU6b] OERM - Magnetic Flagmen at Rest by ac6044cw, on Flickr[/URL]