(The following story by Bryan Chambers appeared on The Herald-Dispatch website on August 20.)
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Imagine waking up in the morning and realizing that you’re going to be late for work because you can’t leave your house.
Or coming home from the grocery store and discovering that the only road to your house is blocked. All you can do is wait as your perishables melt or spoil in the trunk of your car.
Those are just a few of the inconveniences that Steve and Desiree Hann have lived with during the past year. To get to their home and two others along Guyan River Road near Barboursville, they must cross three sets of railroad tracks at a designated public crossing.
But the frequency of trains blocking the crossing has picked up in recent months, so much so that the Hanns are starting to worry less about the daily inconveniences and more about their safety.
“What do we do if one of these homes catches on fire or if we need an ambulance and there’s a train blocking the crossing?” Steve Hann said. “We’re helpless.”
A CSX spokesman said the rail company is working to fix the problem.
The Hanns have lived along Guyan River Road for about five years, as has their neighbor, Nathan Knight. Train traffic never was a problem until a year ago, Knight said. It started with a train blocking the crossing for 30 minutes or so about once a week.
But in recent months, idle trains have become more common, Knight said.
“It just got progressively worse to the point that it was multiple trains per week,” he said.
Knight and Steve Hann say trains block the crossing two to three times per week on average. Every now and then, it can happen two or three times in one day, Knight said. The trains usually block the crossing for at least an hour, though Knight said he has seen them stopped in front of his home for as long as four hours.
Equally frustrating, Knight said, is that the idle trains often come within just a few rail cars of clearing the crossing.
“It’s an incredible inconvenience at the least,” he said.
Trains are prohibited from blocking public crossings longer than 10 minutes, according to state law.
The residents say they have called CSX Transportation at least 50 times over the past year to complain about the problem. A CSX safety employee met the Hanns at their home a few months ago and suggested that the railroad might be willing to clear a mile-long stretch of an old road that runs along the train tracks as an alternative exit route. Nothing has been done since then and their calls to CSX are rarely, if ever, returned, Steve Hann said.
Of the times that CSX has called back, varying reasons have been given for the trains blocking the crossing, residents say. One is that the crew on the train has worked 12 hours and must be replaced with a new crew. Federal law prohibits crews from working more than 12 hours.
The most common excuse for the blockages is that the rail line in the area is not set up to handle the amount of train traffic, Steve Hann and Knight said. The track that runs along Guyan River Road merges with another track at a small rail yard near Barboursville. Trains that run along Guyan River Road must wait for trains to pass through the rail yard before they can proceed.
“The bottom line is that we have heard residents’ concerns and are trying to adjust how trains move through that area,” CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said. “At this time, there is an increase in freight traffic. There are trains coming up from coal territory. It’s a very busy area. At the same time, we want to make sure we are trying to resolve the community’s concerns.”
Sullivan also said CSX has met with the West Virginia Division of Highways to explore “long-term structural changes” at or near the crossing. He declined to elaborate on their proposals.
“No one is trying to deliberately block the crossing. That’s what we want residents to understand first and foremost,” Sullivan said. “Not to say it will never happen again, but our whole intent right now is working on changes that will prevent it from happening.”
Steve Hann said he hopes CSX can fix the problem in the near future. But after dozens of phone calls, several hours of lost work time and a few hundred dollars in spoiled groceries, he said he’s not holding his breath.
“We’re three homes and they’re a giant company making millions of dollars moving coal,” he said. “They could care less about the families they’re affecting now.”