The Red Hot Ramblers band was all set to play a free concert in Etna’s new Riverfront Park Saturday, Sept. 14. Instead of belting out Dixieland jazz, band members found themselves stuck inside the park because a train had blocked the only road into and out of the park.“They got trapped there, and the train stayed and did not move off the tracks for several hours, almost three hours,” says Etna Borough Manager Mary Ellen Ramage. The episode was one in a series of flashpoints that have flared up in recent years involving railroad crossings. The Norfolk Southern Railway Co. owns the tracks that pass through Etna next to the park.Railroads are an important part of Pittsburgh’s history. By the 1850s, Pittsburgh had become the gateway to the West as the point where the Pennsylvania Railroad’s lines terminated: one line heading west to Chicago and the other east to Philadelphia.The rails brought people and raw materials to Pittsburgh. They took finished industrial products to consumers around the world.But Pittsburgh’s relationships with the railroad companies changed as technology and economics moved people and goods off the rails and into trucks and airplanes. Railroad companies went from being local business partners to landlords owning thousands of miles of rail corridors from coast to coast. The Red Hot Ramblers were supposed to play a concert in Etna’s Riverfront Park. Instead, they were trapped alone in the park by a stopped Norfolk Southern train. Photo courtesy of Etna Borough.“Historically, a lot of people worked for the railroad, and the railroad was a neighbor and had a presence in so many communities,” says Jeff Schramm, a railroad historian who teaches at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “You had locomotive shops, you had the local station, you had a local depot and the station agent and all that sort of stuff. But now the trains just fly through.”Railroad companies wield a lot of power. “Railroads have an almost unique sort of legal status in American society, in American history,” says Schramm.When railroads first appeared in the 1820s, states gave them the power of eminent domain. “They can take land just like the government can in so many different cases. Railroads can have their own police forces,” says Schramm. “Railroads have a tremendous power and it goes way, way, way back.”That power gives railroad companies a lot of leeway to control who crosses their tracks and where. Today, railroads are regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration. 1906 Real Estate Plat Book of the Northern Vicinity of Pittsburgh showing the future location of Etna Riverfront Park and the railroad crossing into it. Source: Historicpittsburgh.org.States and local governments pass and enforce laws that have to do with safety and where traffic traverses railroad crossings. Blocked crossings are a nationwide problem, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Some state laws limit crossing blockages to 20 minutes; in Pennsylvania, trains can block crossings for only five minutes, except for certain situations involving safety, broken signals or disabled trains.The Red Hot Ramblers were trapped in Etna’s Riverfront Park for a lot longer than five minutes. “We paid the band $800 to play,” says Ramage. Past experience with Norfolk Southern dissuaded the borough from asking the railroad to compensate them for the concert. Ramage thinks it might have cost the borough a lot more than $800 to try to recover what they paid for the concert. She vividly recalls the difficulty the borough had dealing with the railroad before the park was built.Access to Etna’s Riverfront Park, which opened in 2021, is by Bridge Street. There has been a public railroad crossing there ever since Norfolk Southern’s predecessor, the Pennsylvania Railroad, owned the tracks. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission ordered Norfolk Southern to remove a private crossing sign at this railroad crossing leading to the Etna Riverfront Park. The PUC ordered the railroad to install this signal and “crossbuck.” Photo by David S. Rotenstein.While planning to build the park, Norfolk Southern told Etna that it would have to construct a bridge over the tracks to access the park. That would have cost more than $3 million, says Ramage. Instead, in 2017 the borough filed a case with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. The PUC found that the railroad had erroneously marked the crossing as private and ordered Norfolk Southern to remove a “Private Crossing” sign and to install a “crossbuck”: a traffic sign for the crossing.The Etna case isn’t the only example of a railroad company throwing its weight around in Pittsburgh area communities. In 2022, Forward Township marina and excavating business owner Sam McCrossin found the only access to his property and businesses was barricaded by CSX Transportation Inc. Edsel Lane, the private road McCrossin and his customers used to access his property, crosses CSX tracks. The road is older than the railroad, which was built in 1889 by CSX predecessor, the McKeesport & Belle Vernon Railroad Co.McCrossin bought his property in 2017 and opened three businesses there: a marina, a pub and an excavating company. After repair work at the crossing by CSX in July 2022, a visitor to McCrossin’s property became stuck on the tracks. McCrossin claimed that faulty work by CSX affected the crossing. The railroad then told McCrossin that he could no longer use the crossing unless he paid the railroad to maintain it. In December 2022, CSX barricaded the crossing.In December 2022, CSX closed the only access to Sam McCrossin’s Forward businesses and posted “No Trespassing” signs at the crossing. Photo by David S. Rotenstein.In July, McCrossin sued CSX in federal court to reopen the crossing. Unable to operate his businesses for two years, McCrossin declined to comment on the case while it is pending.Once lifelines for cities and small towns, railroads have now, in some situations, become a problem neighbor. Some of the public officials and community organizations NEXTpittsburgh approached while reporting this story declined to speak on the record out of fear of angering the railroad companies.Norfolk Southern responded to emailed questions about its crossing policies and about the September concert. “We make every effort to avoid inconveniencing communities with a stopped train. Trains have to stop for a number of reasons, including congestion on the tracks or in yards, coordinating traffic with other railroads, federally mandated crew rest time, power outages affecting train signal devices or mechanical issues,” wrote a Norfolk Southern spokesperson. “Our goal is to keep our trains moving safely and the teams within our Network Operations Center make every effort to minimize these events.”The post Etna train delay highlights growing problem: highly powerful railroad companies appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh.