State could pay for gate at railroad crossing

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: May 16, 2008

Town of Culpeper officials are doing what they have to do to keep the train horns silent.

Town Engineer Chuck Stephenson, director of planning, told Town Council this week that the town must erect a sign designating a railroad crossing at U.S. Avenue by June 24 in order to maintain the town — per Federal Rail Administration standards — as “a quiet zone.”

Further, said public works director Bobby Thornhill, signs already in place at each of the town’s other two railroad crossings at Chandler and Spencer streets will get bolted-on addi-tions that say, “No train horn.”

The sign at U.S. Avenue will also get the extra language. This crossing, leading into the Na-tional Cemetery, is on federal property and therefore not within the town’s purview for safety measures or maintenance.

However, in order keep train engineers from blowing their horns as they pass through town all applicable federal guidelines for safety at crossings must be met.
The town — and especially its downtown residents living in neighborhoods along the railroad — learned the hard way about the new safety standards when passing trains, up to 25 per day, began sounding the deafening horns in June of 2005.

Because there were no crossing gates or flashing lights at the U.S. Avenue crossing, the new regulations required engineers to make some noise with their whistles, producing quite a racket at all hours of the night.

There have been several train-vehicle collisions at the U.S. Avenue crossing in the past decade, as recently as March when a freight train ripped the bumper from an elderly woman’s car. She was not injured.

The town moved fast to cease the whistle blowing three years ago, obtaining grandfather status from the FRA since a local ordinance enacted in 1969 prohibited the sounding of train horns in town. But there were strings attached.

In order to maintain the silence, the federally owned U.S. Avenue crossing needed gates. It still does, but who would pay for the costly project?

When federal sources came up dry, it looked like the town was going to have to foot the bill for railroad safety and its residents’ peace and quiet to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.

Stephenson told Town Council Tuesday though that there could be state money available to fund the project. The U.S. Avenue crossing project made it into VDOT’s six-year plan, he said, and hopefully the Commonwealth Transportation Board will approve it next month.

If approved, VDOT funding for the project will be available next year, Stephenson said, in time for the federal deadline of June 2010 to erect safety gates and lights at U.S. Avenue.

In the meantime, the town will put up the new and modified signs at its railroad crossings and send a letter to its congressional delegation about the situation — in order to meet the more pressing deadline for temporary safety measures of June 24.

Thornhill said Friday that the signs had been ordered and there would be no problem getting them up in time. He noted that U.S. Avenue is not a town street, but realized the trade-off.

“To keep the train whistles from blowing, we will go ahead and erect the signs so people can sleep peacefully,” Thornhill said.

He also said the eventual installation of gates at the site would make it “a whole lot safer.”

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or