That Time 3 Freight Trains Made My Bus 55 Minutes Late
In this video, I'll be telling a rather embarrassing story of how three freight trains made my bus 55 minutes late, causing me to break my personal record for the latest I've ever been.
It all happened at the 12th & Vultee St railroad crossing in Allentown, PA. This crossing is located on the Norfolk Southern Reading Line, a busy freight line that starts at the Bethlehem Storage Yard or Allentown Hump Yard, and leads to a junction with the Harrisburg Line. This line sees an average of 50 or more freight trains per day. Trains often stop at CP Burn, near the Auburn Street railroad crossing to either wait for permission into the yards or wait for another train with higher priority.
The railroad crossing at 12th & Vultee St is located at the entrance of the Merchants Square Mall. It is equipped with a cantilever at Merchants Square Mall and three devices with flashers and gate mechanisms. The cantilever has a separate pole behind it that holds a gate mechanism and flashers that are angled towards Vultee St. The crossing has two Safetran Type 3 E-bells, one on the cantilever and the other on Vultee St, but I think at one time, there used to be 4 bells.
If you'd like to see more stories like this, let me know. There's no shortage of them, and some of them are quite funny.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:30 Westbound intermodal train passing by on track 1, towards Emmaus
1:54 Crossing doesn't turn off
3:30 Realizing I had a long wait
4:20 Norfolk Southern AC44C6M and Norfolk Southern ES44AC leading a westbound intermodal train on track 1 which takes over 10 minutes to pass
9:00 A well car with graffiti on the bogey
11:00 BNSF Grain train finally starts moving
15:25 An explanation of the tracks in that area
16:06 What I learned from this whole ordeal