MD-W Roselle Speed Restriction

[lstone19]

Boarding my daily Metra MD-W train at Roselle, I've noticed the two preceding inbound expresses running quite slowly through Roselle for the last two+ weeks. Appears to be about 30mph from Roselle West (control point about a mile west of the Roselle station) to the Roselle station. There's no track work evident so I'm puzzled as to what's going on. With three grade crossing in Roselle, I sure hope this isn't another state mandated speed restriction like the one at Grand Ave. in Elmwood Park that just serves to slow an already slow trip. A mile of 30 mph running vs. 70 mph adds well over a minute to the trip. A couple of trainman I've asked acknowledged there's a speed restriction but had no idea why or if it was permanent or temporary.

[dinwitty]

ask the trainmen why.

could be any number of things, turnouts looking for some repair, perhaps some trackwork needed, or some overhead issues (if electric)

probably cautionary till the work is done (if this is the case)

[EricL]

I know nothing about it, but if I had to guess, it's probably a signal dept. issue, such as crossing gate timing.

Usually surfacing calls for a temporary slow order at 25-ish for a period afterward, but it's rare for those to be up more than a couple of days. Metra, in particular, likes to get rid of them as quickly as possible - in some cases after running just a few trains. Anyways, if they were doing surfacing, you'd have seen some machines out there at some point, even if they were just parked at one of those industry tracks just west of town, or at Itasca.

It could be tie condition, or the crossings may need to be rehabbed. It isn't rail condition - that stuff was all just laid less than ten years ago, when they replaced the old stick rail.

Or, the village could have passed a speed ordinance... call village hall and find out.

[lstone19]

I know nothing about it, but if I had to guess, it's probably a signal dept. issue, such as crossing gate timing.

Usually surfacing calls for a temporary slow order at 25-ish for a period afterward, but it's rare for those to be up more than a couple of days. Metra, in particular, likes to get rid of them as quickly as possible - in some cases after running just a few trains. Anyways, if they were doing surfacing, you'd have seen some machines out there at some point, even if they were just parked at one of those industry tracks just west of town, or at Itasca.

It could be tie condition, or the crossings may need to be rehabbed. It isn't rail condition - that stuff was all just laid less than ten years ago, when they replaced the old stick rail.

Or, the village could have passed a speed ordinance... call village hall and find out.

Could be a gate issue. I noticed a couple of days ago there are green flags on Track 2 ("Inbound" track) only both directions just beyond a pair of grade crossings (Prospect St. and Park St.). No flags on Track 1 nor do the limits seem to include the busier Roselle Rd. crossing (which has annoying long timings - in fact, a westbound will put the gates down at Roselle Rd. a good 20 seconds before Prospect St. even though Prospect St. is east of Roselle Rd.; a westbound that comes into Roselle "hot" will knock the gates down before its station stop, they then time out, and the go down again which completely messes up the Roselle Rd./Irving Park Rd. traffic light which is interrupted by that crossing).

[justalurker66]

Could be a gate issue. I noticed a couple of days ago there are green flags on Track 2 ("Inbound" track) only both directions just beyond a pair of grade crossings (Prospect St. and Park St.). No flags on Track 1 nor do the limits seem to include the busier Roselle Rd. crossing (which has annoying long timings - in fact, a westbound will put the gates down at Roselle Rd. a good 20 seconds before Prospect St. even though Prospect St. is east of Roselle Rd.; a westbound that comes into Roselle "hot" will knock the gates down before its station stop, they then time out, and the go down again which completely messes up the Roselle Rd./Irving Park Rd. traffic light which is interrupted by that crossing).

With that description I would not be surprised to see the timings lengthened on Prospect St before the flags are removed. How many seconds before train is each crossing set up to activate on each track?

As far as the time out ... it sounds like it should be lengthened to be longer than the station stop. Either that or get the station stop done faster. The crossing logic is going to assume that an approaching train is not going to stop.

[lstone19]

Could be a gate issue. I noticed a couple of days ago there are green flags on Track 2 ("Inbound" track) only both directions just beyond a pair of grade crossings (Prospect St. and Park St.). No flags on Track 1 nor do the limits seem to include the busier Roselle Rd. crossing (which has annoying long timings - in fact, a westbound will put the gates down at Roselle Rd. a good 20 seconds before Prospect St. even though Prospect St. is east of Roselle Rd.; a westbound that comes into Roselle "hot" will knock the gates down before its station stop, they then time out, and the go down again which completely messes up the Roselle Rd./Irving Park Rd. traffic light which is interrupted by that crossing).

With that description I would not be surprised to see the timings lengthened on Prospect St before the flags are removed. How many seconds before train is each crossing set up to activate on each track?

As far as the time out ... it sounds like it should be lengthened to be longer than the station stop. Either that or get the station stop done faster. The crossing logic is going to assume that an approaching train is not going to stop.

Form observation, Prospect St. and Park St. are the standard 20 seconds. But Roselle Rd. is a ridiculously long approx. 60 seconds. It's way too long and with the traffic light pre-emption, the intersections are drained worst case 30 seconds before any train gets there.

The lengthy time at Roselle Rd. adds a lot of variability to my morning trip from home to the station which means I have to allow 15 minutes for the two mile trip. With an outbound deadhead (turning to my train) and two inbound expresses in the 15 minutes before my train departs, the trip can take a long time when everything goes "wrong".

Speeding up the station stop at Roselle will not happen. Stops are already no longer than needed to do business but Roselle is the second busiest station on the line (excluding CUS) and therefore station stops always take longer.

[lstone19]

The word I finally heard is that it's due to the condition of one of the grade crossings. And while there have been track panels for the repair on site for a while, there's no money for the actual repair (meanwhile, a few week ago, a grade crossing on the freight spur into the Schaumburg Industrial Park was redone and it's now rougher for highway traffic than it was before the work).

[lstone19]

I guess they're finally going to do something about it. Both of the roads crossing at grade are now posted for nine-day closures beginning 9/11.

[lstone19]

At last, the speed restriction is gone. And the grade crossing work completed ahead of schedule (I thought it sacrilege for any Illinois road construction project to be finished ahead of schedule ).