Not something I think most of our heritage roads would face, but maybe we should be prepared anyway; that's why I put this here instead of Railfanning:

http://gazette.com/article/1510863

They wouldn't be so fast if they had to accept all the liability for what happens at the crossings as a result.

oh, I thought they wanted steam whistles

The best way to eliminate horn blowing is with grade separations. Life is better for everyone with a grade seperation, after it is paid for. Fort Collins is a special case, but after you look at what was done for the Port of Long Beach, Reno, and Elko I am sure there is a solution for Fort Collins. There are more than ten major grade seperation projects on going in the Los Angeles/Inland Empire area right now. It is just a matter of the Colorado politicians needing to bring home the bacon.

Nonsense, if you jump onto a moving train and get your legs sliced off, its the Railroads fault. Fort Collins logic

< It is just a matter of the Colorado politicians needing to bring home the bacon.

Maybe they should do something radical like legalizing marijuana and then use the profits for grade separation projects all over the state.

There are things that both communities and railroads can do to address the concern of noise. Local governments can conduct noise and traffic studies to identify crossings that are candidates for mitigation or closure.

We can mitigate the problem to a large extent through two means: being a good neighbor and acquiring land where possible to build up a buffer zone between our properties and residential areas. Being a good neighbor is the least expensive and probably the most effective means. if we are willing to make an effort. When I was at TVRM, the rule against unnecessary use of the whistle/air horn was strictly observed. On rare occasions, we had to switch the yard at night. On those occasions, we would determine what signals would be used for switching operations at our crew safety briefing. If all hands had working radios, we might not use any sound signal but conduct moves by radio only. If I gave a hand signal, the engineer would acknowledge the instruction by either radio or a couple of taps on the locomotive bell. Of course, horn and bell were always used for crossings or the tunnel.

That's just it, with Fort Collins, it's mostly street running through town, on one of the town's busier roads, with a lot of intersections. It's kind of unavoidable, unless you go around the town and abandon the in-town track.

Tacoma has a few no signalling grade crossings with horn speakers pointed into the intersection directly, they have an odd red 'X' on the approaches. A BNSF employee just recently told me what those were for. The sound apparently comes from speakers, focused into the crossing and it appears they aren't heard very far beyond it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErPVfLStPus

I've seen those on other parts of the BNSF-seems that they're the most common installation and probably the least expensive no-horn option.

I've driven past Ruston Way crossing plenty of times when a train is going by, I've never heard the horns at all since they changed the signalling there. It's effective for noise pollution issues, I'll give them that.

Just to the south of downtown, the BNSF line also cuts through the center of the busy Colorado State University campus.

Not in Colorado, and technically not about silent crossings, but still appropriate; found it at Railroad.net:

http://www.13wham.com/news/features/top ... 2084.shtml

As one fellow at Railroad.net said, it gets better:

https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.c ... l?nav=5005

What stood out most for me was this:

"It's a trip Sietmann takes almost every day, and he said he's never seen a train go by.

"'The scariest thing was that I didn't notice the train until I was right on the tracks,' he said."

Just a reminder to stay alert and not get into a routine!