Trains are cool. Who doesn’t love waving at a locomotive and hearing the engineer rip off a toot or two? On the horn.
Trains are not cool, however, when you’re sitting at a railroad crossing as the world’s longest train is clacking along at the speed of drugged slugs when you’re in a hurry to get home to watch I Love Lucy reruns.
Folks in Flowery Branch are railing about the slow-poke freight trains that are clogging traffic in the vicinity of Hideaway Bay Marina, among other spots in town.
Trains typically blast through the area at 50 MPH, but culverts in need of repair under the tracks have caused trains to slow down to 10 MPH or less. There were reports that the culverts showed signs of collapse that caused the tracks to also begin to sag.
Norfolk Southern has nothing about the slowdown on their website, but one official in Flowery Branch was quoted as saying the railroad might increase speeds to 25 MPH in a few weeks and back to 50 MPH by October or so.
That will give us plenty of time to wave at engineers and have conversations with them as they creep along.
For months.
