trailmix

Ok, so this is a pretty odd question but here goes. Does anybody here commute along RR tracks. Not on them but along the gravelly side bits. I started a new job and I am trying to work out my commute. The two road options are: 1) 19 miles of rural back roads with +- 1700 feet of climbing 2) 14 miles on the shoulder of US highway with crazy high speed (65mph+ semi, diesel truck, etc) traffic. Neither of these options is ideal and I know there is a RR track that parallels the highway and would probably cut the distance to around 12 miles. I am thinking of riding a short section after work to see how it goes but I was wondering if anybody on this forum has tried this and what were their results?

Skipjacks

Well for starters....it may well be illegal to be that close to the tracks. It depends on the state and the railroad. Check first.

If it is legal....if you are talking about riding on the ballast stones (the 1 inch sized rocks that go between the cross ties to keep the tracks from sliding around) you can't ride on that stuff. It's too loose. You'll wear yourself out fast. Some railroads have ballast stone that only extends a foot from the side of the cross ties. Some have ballast beds wide enough for a whole extra track to rest on.

If you are talking about the hard pack access paths a few feet off the tracks, it'll be a great ride. Low grade elevation for sure. Probably relatively smooth. If it's hard pack limestone...wonderful.

This also makes a difference in legality. Riding on the tracks or within 3 feet of them is almost certainly illegal. (Not to mention really stupid, depending on the type of train. Heavy freight trains don't exactly sneak up on you so you'd have plenty of warning with all the noise and ground rumbling. But light rail commuter trains can get up on your fast and relatively quiet) Riding on the access roads next to the tracks depends on where you are and what railroad it is.

no motor?

I can't answer your question, but I can say that waiting behind the gate while the trains go by can be pretty intense when they are close and moving quickly. I don't think I'd want to end up parallel to them and not noticing the train as it approached.

pdlamb

As a college kid living along a main line track, it wasn't unusual for us to walk a couple miles into the nearest town on the tracks. I couldn't understand back then how people got run over by trains -- I could feel them and hear them a mile away. But it happened then, and it happens now.

One of our local rail trails was created by taking the ties and rails away, leaving the enormous (2"?) ballast gravel. I took the family out there one time. On "monster" (at the time) 2.25" mountain bike tires, it was all I could do to concentrate on keeping the bike upright. Note this was in the center of the former track bed, where it was level. I can't fathom trying to ride along the edge of the ballast. But between the seismic insulation of the tires, the noise of the ballast crunching, and the concentration to wrestle the bike, I could easily see how someone trying such a stunt on an active rail line could be killed.

Back to the original question. If there's a truck road paralleling the rail line, and if either it's legal or you don't mind getting arrested for trespassing, then your idea might have merit. Just stay off the tracks!

Lemond1985

I have been riding along RR tracks in California for over 40 years. No one, be it farmer, sheriff, city cop, landowner, RR company cars, RR company trucks, RR company police, train conductor, or hobo, has ever even hinted that riding along the tracks is illegal and / or that I could get arrested.

The RR in my area, BNSF, has some areas of tracks near town posted "No Trespassing", and in these areas few people go, and they are pretty much impassible from non-use. But that leads me to believe that the other thousands of miles of track that are not posted, have no restrictions. They get used daily by joggers, bicyclists, and dog walkers.

Maybe someone who is an expert at this stuff could correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the land used for tracks is technically owned by the landowner, but the railroad has an "easement" allowing them to use the land, but only for uses involving trains and track maintenance. So I'm not sure if the railroad would have authority to tell someone to leave if it's not their land, or why they would even care. The one time a RR employee approached me, was because he thought I had parked my car too close to the tracks and asked me to move it. However, he did not tell me I was trespassing or ask me to leave. I have seen kids on dirt bikes run off by farmers occasionally, I suspect motorcycles is where the line is drawn.

So long story short, after 40+ years, I still don't know for certain whether someone can be cited for trespassing when riding a bicycle along RR tracks or not, but my experience has been "as long as you aren't breaking some other law, or pissing someone off, no one will bother you."

Skipjacks

The easement depends on the railroad and where it is. Some tracks are on easements. Some are owned by the railroad. Usually the closer to get to populated areas, the more the railroad owns the land under the tracks and the less sense of humor the railroad has about tresspassing.

Anyway, 1000 people died in 2018 by trespassing on railroad tracks. So it's not danger free (though to be fair I do think you have to be 6 kinds of dumb to somehow NOT HEAR A FREIGHT TRAIN COMING)
https://oli.org/about-us/news/statis...ities-by-state

Apparently Norfolk Southern has it's own railroad police force that does nothing but look for tresspassers. They arrested 19 people this year for tresspassing on tracks. (I was not aware of this)
https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news...-officials-say

Amtrak has a whole safety webpage dedicated to reminding you that it's illegal to walk on or near their tracks (They are owned by the government though so of course everything is more strict)
https://www.amtrakcascades.com/safet...is-trespassing

Of course you are in California. People in California tend to be a little more chill about things than in other parts of the country, where people have a bug up their poopers about the dumbest stuff. And you are on BNSF tracks, which is owned as various subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway. I doubt Warren Buffet cares too much about people walking on his railroad tracks because 1) He's a good old boy form Nebraska and probably enjoys doing it himself and 2) he can afford it if your widow sues him because you somehow got yourself run over by a freight train

On that same note, despite how illegal it is to walk on train tracks in many parts of the country, try watching the TV show Railroad Alaska on Discovery Channel. Up there you see people standing on the tracks on purpose while the train is coming waiving a flag to signal the train to stop and pick you up in the middle of freakin' nowhere (just like the old days!). That's not considered 'dangerous' in Alaska. Up there they call that the 'obvious common sense way to get the train to stop for you'

So it really depends on where you are. Which railroad. How close you are to dense populations. Etc. The more country you get, the less anyone gives an eff.

bpcyclist

I live a stone's throw from very busy Amtrak and BNSF tracks, which I cross multiple times daily. For those of you who have not spent much time around today's locomotives, you literally would not believe how quiet they can be when they are not accelerating. Like, almost silent. It is extremely scary because all the fancy people in their fancy condos around here lobbied the city council to get the trains to stop their terribly annoying horn blowing when they pass through the neighborhood numerous times a day. The city council of course caved, so now the trains plow through here silently. It is a disaster waiting to happen.

So, anyhow, I just wanted to share my experience with modern trains and noise level. If you ride along those tracks close to the actual tracks themselves, just be aware--it is entirely possible you will not hear that locomotive until he is right up in your stuff.

Darth Lefty 

Nowhere to ride along the light rail here. The land goes up and down but the rail is graded, so there’s cuts and bridges with no side access. There’s a footstep between each tie. Fortunately there’s a bike path parallel one side and a road the other.

nearby there’s a rails to trails project where the rails are intact and road fill macadam was put between the ties so it’s like a gravel road with rails embedded within. There’s a club who have the rights to it. They envision an excursion train and have some rolling stock but their investment ship never comes in.

CliffordK

1700 feet of climbing in 19 miles is a lot, but I'd probably choose that over the highway.... probably.... I guess it depends on the exact details. How much traffic? Road Shoulders? Rumble Strips? Shoulder condition, etc.

As far as the RR track, is there a frontage road along much of it? Parts of it? All of it?

How many trains? Do you know the approximate schedule? How much racket do they make? Do they fill with ballast to the tops of the ties? RR Bridges?

Vintage Schwinn

I would not do it.

You might get an off-schedule train comin from two miles out.

You always think that you've got more time and that you can hear and feel the train, so you believe that you can get clear enough of the tracks before it arrives.
When I was about eight years old, the group of neighborhood kids including me, went to the railroad tracks to flatten pennies.......why? because some of the guys said it was "neato" to have a penny flattened as thin as a razor blade. What I can say is that because we experienced that seemingly, all the trains came from one direction, we were surprised that another came from the opposite direction that we had never experienced before. The speed of the train was typically fast but we thought it wouldn't ever be any faster, oh boy, were we wrong on another. Sure, we had enough bail out area to jump out of the way but you know if any one of us had stumbled or tripped and fell, it would have been very dicey and possibly could have been killed, because we were making assumptions that the trains would be coming from this direction at this approximate speed at this time of the day, but we really had no clue, as past history is not necessarily a predictor of these things as schedules change and/or an off schedule train comin fast from two miles out. With the other daytime noises, heck we probably didn't feel or hear it until it was almost in visible range, and everybody would yell to everybody else. I participated on two occasions and then was educated by my daddy after showing off the flattened penny. He told us that it is incredibly dangerous and that even though that you think you can hear the train, it is extremely close to you at that time. He also told us that it was a fellow knee....learned that felony meant a serious criminal offense. He told us that people had been killed because they didn't hear the train or were otherwise distracted and/or daydreaming and didn't get out of the way fast enough.
Almost a decade later while a junior and senior in high school, a group of friends would sit and drink with about 5,000 other folks on the large elevated train trestle ( "the Tracks") as they were known in Athens to watch UGA football games for free. Every week some severely intoxicated first-timer would comment with something like what the heck do we do if a train comes. People would respond, that it doesn't run on game day, but you might want to be concerned about being able to walk off this trestle without falling off so you might want to stop at ten beers. Folks continued to do that for many years until the stadium had its first of many modern enlargements after 1980 season.
This thread also brought up that film crew that was trying to get that dream sequence for the movie that was about Gregg Allman. The director and actors and crew were doing the shot without a permit and without any notice to or permission from CSX railroad who owned the tracks. They guessed wrong and a train that they did not expect came upon them....

trailmix

Let me clarify a bit. There is a faint path that runs along 90-95% of the route that I assume is used by service trucks and it is approximately 10-12 feet from the track itself. Some areas of the path are more prominent than others so there would be a few instances of riding the larger rocks. The tracks are freight only and the trains are very loud so I don't see how they could sneak up on anyone. And again, I will not be riding on the tracks.

Honestly, this seems less dangerous than the highway which is pretty hostile to cyclists. At least I know exactly where the train is going to be unlike the traffic on the highway.

I am going to stick to the backroads for now until I can do some more investigating but I am still open to this option. Thanks for the input.

Lemond1985

Where I used to live, the RR tracks were the place there was to ride, other than 55 mph rural roads with no shoulder. If there are other people using the tracks, as evidenced by the "faint path", I seriously doubt there will be a problem. It's a good thing there are other users because RR track rights of way that aren't used get overgrown and become pretty much impassible after a few years, not much different than riding across an un-tracked open field, i.e., not much fun.

Skipjacks

If it's a service access road, how is the visibility?

Because it only takes 1 time for a service truck to be speeding down a path where he doesn't expect anyone else to be to run you over.

Lemond1985

Well, let's see.

Run over by service trucks. Hit by trains you don't hear approaching because modern trains are so quiet (). Arrested for trespassing. Killed by "off schedule" trains, despite the fact you are 15-20 feet from the rails. 2" rocks along the track too large to ride over.

FWIW, I have never experienced any of these things, though sometimes there are sometimes a few larger rocks where the tracks cross various roads, for the last 15-20 feet approaching the road. I assume they are to keep the dirt there from getting too torn up where vehicles enter and exit the roadway.

no motor?

A friend of a friend retired after being an engineer for the passenger rail line around here, and he'd been to the mandatory counseling they have after hitting and killing a pedestrian several times. Most of his friends had the same experience too. Most of the deaths were suicides, but even with an alert engineer it takes a while to stop a train.

CliffordK

I'd probably ride the service road. And, you may well hear the service vehicles coming if there is some isolation between that road and the highway. Pay attention to your surroundings and you should be fine.

In my younger years, I lived near a railroad. I ran along the service road, then hopped over to a private logging road and ran maybe 5 to 10 miles out and back. It was a pleasant course. And, I don't think I was the only one that did it, although not a lot of people.

Rural trains can go FAST.
Urban trains often have speed limits, just like cars.

CliffordK

Why don't you do a test ride along the tracks, maybe on a weekend. See how you like it? 15 miles of dirt and gravel may not be fun for a commute either.

Look for Trespassing signs, or other uses of the paths. Also, look for exceptions on trespassing signs (non motorized?)

Lemond1985

And avoid watching this film: