Who here enjoys waiting for a train at a railroad crossing?

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While lots of people seem to be annoyed by waiting for a train I enjoy waiting for trains at railroad crossings.

Do you mean waiting for a train to arrive so you can get on it, or waiting for a train to go by before you can safely walk or drive across the tracks?

Waiting for a train to go by before you can safely walk or drive across the tracks.

If I'm not trying to get to an appointment, I enjoy trains. Like to count the cars. Like to see if they have a reversed engine at the rear, if it's a long freight train. Keep hoping I'll see a real caboose, but the last time I saw one of those was in the 1990s in the UK.

It's pretty rare for me to have to wait for a train. The only time that can happen is on one of my rare visits to a nearby town. There are no trains in my county.

They don't use cabooses anymore. In the 90's they were replaced by a little computer device the size of a gas meter that they put at the end of the last car that monitors the train. I did used to see unused cabooses parked on isolated railroad sidings back in the 90's. But haven't seen one on a train either for a long time. Even boxcars aren't used as much as they used to be because now they use sea-land type shipping containers on flat cars more and more.

What country do you live in (may I ask?)?

I did not know this! Thank you. I guess I'll go to the train museum, yes we have one, to see the caboose or cabooses (caboosae? caboosi?) there. Makes sense, I always thought about the safety of the guys riding at the tail end of the train. I've been wanting to go to that museum anyway

Sometimes, freight trains are miles long.

Where I grew up there were no railroad tracks or trains. Trains were exotic to me. So when we went on holiday one of the big things was to see trains and waiting at a railroad crossing was a peak of excitement to me(close to if we by chance drove right beside a train before it outrun the car).
As an adult I have become more accustomed to trains but the feeling of excitement combined with the fact that I still don`t live close enough to a railway to make trains a daily thing to see, still makes it a positive experience to wait for the train to pass. I rarely experience it so ....

I find that railroad tracks seems "poetic" to me. I like looking at them and they always make me feel like I want to hear a story....

I think that one of the primary uses for cabooses was so that the guy in the caboose could lean out the window on turns and look for axles getting too hot and smoking. With modern sensor technology, I understand that they now have sensors on every axle that can warn them without them having to keep a close eye.

Trains are pretty rare around here, I think I hear them more often than I see them (which is still fairly uncommon). I'm not even sure how many times I've been stopped at a RR crossing before in my life...probably enough to count on one hand.

I think, me personally behind the wheel, I've only stopped at a RR one time. It was late at night, in one of the really bad neighborhoods in town, so I was really nervous about it =| Someone could've easily mugged me and I would've had no way to escape (there were cars behind me).

Beautiful pictures Esmeralda Weatherwax!! Looking at them I agree very much with what I wrote

^ Ditto that. Very atmospheric.

My county is the only one in the state with no train tracks.
I loved seeing trains when I was a kid,always waved at the guy on the caboose and he waved back most of the time.Sad to know they are a thing of the past.