Woodruff Road

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Railroad Grade Crossing

When it comes to train vs car, the train always wins.

In 2019, there were 2,216 collisions at railroad grade crossings. There are about 200,000 grade crossings in North America.

This number would be much, much higher without the safety equipment at the point where roadway and railway meet.

A grade crossing is where an automotive road crosses a railroad track (usually at 90 degrees). All crossings are required to have a least a sign or crossbuck, the “X” sign that reads “RAILROAD CROSSING”.

At heavily used roads and railroads, the crossing may have flashing lights with a warning bell and a gate. The grade crossing at Woodruff Lane in Marysville (featured sketch) has all the bells and whistles in grade crossings. No car wants to get in the way of a Union Pacific freight train.

In a later post about railroad semaphore, I noted that a freight train can take over a mile to come to a stop so if a car pulls in front of a train traveling at 55 miles an hour, even if the engineer applies the brakes, the car is toast.

With that in mind, a flashing, clanging, gated contraption makes a whole lot of sense.

And common sense tells us that when the warning lights are blinking or the safety arm is down, we should stop, no mater how much we may be in a hurry. It is odd that some motorist choose to ignore these warning signals and try to “beat” the train, usually with fatal consequences.

There are quite a few videos posted on youtube to demonstrate what happen when trucks and cars meet a fright train. Here is one such compilation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5kMZcR0Us

You will never win with a game of chicken with a freight train.

A series on railroad grade crossing signs in Santa Cruz.
The grade crossing on the UP line from Marysville to Oroville. The approach from the other side is blind hence the cantilevered signal to the left. This grade crossing has about everything to make it as safe as it can be.
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Bald Eagles of Yuba County

One of my favorite winter birding destinations is in Yuba County, just off Highway 20, northeast of Marysville. The country roads of Woodruff, Mathews, and Kimball are great backwater roads to see the abundance of wintering waterfowl consisting of snow and greater white-fronted geese, tundra swans, white-faced ibis, and wintering raptors.

Tundra study

Study sketch of a tundra swan. The area around Highway 20 is one of the best places to see large numbers of this beautiful swan.

There is nothing in the natural world quite like seeing a sky full of snow geese. The sight and sounds fill the senses like few others experiences.IMG_7972

Thousands of snow geese erupt into the air near Kimball Lane.

The thousands of waterfowl that winter in the Central Valley also attracts a predator: the bald eagle. On Thanksgiving morning, in partly sunny and partly rainy weather I spotted an adult bald eagle perched in a field just to my left on Kimball Road. So I got out an took a few pictures, the eagle was jumpy and soon flew off across the road. This was a clean adult bird with pure white on it’s head and tail and chocolate-brown body feathers. This was a beautiful specimen of Haliaeetus leucocephalus.

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Even a non-birder would be able to identify this large raptor.

IMG_8120I headed down Kimball Lane with a wintering wonderland of waterfowl on all sides and thousand of stretched out “V”s in the air. I came to the junction of Jack Slough Road and I turned right. As I headed down the road on this Thanksgiving morning I saw three wild turkeys off in a field to my left. I pulled over to get some photos, but the birds had disappeared into the brush. This was a good day to be skittish if you are a turkey! That’s when I saw my an immature bald eagle fly over. Then an adult appeared, soaring over the powerlines and then coming to rest in a field to the right.

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This was another adult from the one I saw earlier. The white head feathers appeared more “dirty” round the eye.

The bald moved around some more before finally landing in the center of a field. The eagle walked around and appeared to be eating some sort of waterfowl that was hidden in the undulating rifts of the plowed but fallow field.

I figured the eagle was going to be here for a little while so I pulled out my sketching bag and did a field sketch (featured sketch). One issue I have had with sketching bald eagles from life is that I either make their head too big or their bright yellow beak too large. In this sketch, I made the beak a tad too long. Oh well, I learn something with every field sketch that will guide me when I make future field sketches.

AMKE study

Here is one of our smallest raptors, a male American kestrel, perched on a sign on Kimball Lane. It  has been said that if this falcon was the size of a bald eagle it would surely be our National Symbol.