(The following story by Abe Winter appeared on the Journal Times website on April 20.)
CALEDONIA, Wisc. — A stopped train blocked the railroad crossing at Six Mile Road for more than six hours Sunday, infuriating residents and town officials and racking up more than $13,000 in fines for the railroad.
The Union Pacific train was delivering coal to the We Energies plant when it stopped. The last car on the train blocked the crossing from at least 4:33 p.m. to 10:33 p.m. When police checked at the other end of the train, there was no locomotive attached.
Town Chairman Susan Greenfield called it “a nightmare.”
Police Chief Jeffrey Meier, tongue-in-cheek, said, “The price of coal probably is going to go up.” Caledonia police issued 20 tickets in all. Nineteen of the tickets, written every 20 minutes, carried a fine of $660 for blocking the highway. The other ticket, for $1,280, was for being a public nuisance because it was the sixth time since October 2003 the railroad had been ticketed for similar violations.
Caledonia police said they could have written more tickets. The town ordinance forbids blocking a highway for more than 10 minutes.
Meier said police dispatchers called the railroad in Omaha, Neb., several times, and the railroad was going to try to find the engine and engineer. But they hadn’t been found by 9:30 p.m., prompting Meier to tell the railroad that 6,500 people rely on the crossing, and warn them of the implications if the blocked crossing caused a delayed emergency response to a fire or rescue call.
That seemed to do the trick. Union Pacific sent an engine and crew from Waukegan, Ill., to move the train.
Union Pacific offered no explanation Monday, although Meier thinks he has it figured out.
“They probably parked this train on a side track and left without checking to see if they had cleared the Six Mile crossing,” Meier said.
“It’s hard to say why, but in one incident we cited them for last year, they parked the train and went for lunch.”
“The train blocking that particular crossing has been a problem for some time,” Greenfield said. “I don’t recall it ever being blocked for that length of time, though.”
Greenfield blasted Union Pacific for creating what she called a dangerous situation. She said she fielded a lot of calls from angry people in Crestview, who had to drive out of their way to leave their subdivision.
“It was a nightmare,” she said. “We never got an explanation. What appeared to happen is the train operator left the train blocking the crossing and left with his engine. So there was no engine to move the train.”
Dennis Kornwolf, former town chairman and county executive, lives one-quarter mile north of the crossing and less than two city block east of the tracks. He’s among the residents of about 1,300 homes using that crossing to get to Douglas Road and Highway 31.
“They could have moved it ahead and not caused a problem,” he said.
“They’ve tied up that crossing for an hour to an hour and a half and they do it in the morning when people are going to work,” Kornwolf said. “This is just an ongoing problem and there seems to be no way to regulate it – none.
“This railroad is a bad neighbor,” Kornwolf said.
A call to We Energies yielded a phone number for a Union Pacific spokesman, who couldn’t be reached Monday night.
Kornwolf said We Energies has to shoulder some of the blame.
“It’s their responsibility,” Kornwolf said of We Energies. “This is the blame game, and it’s upsetting to hear them say that they have nothing to do with the
railroad.”
Kornwolf said he would like We Energies to step up to the plate and do some damage control.
“Don’t you think they could talk to the railroad and say `stop doing this’? You’re powerless over this and that’s what’s so frustrating.”