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Crossings / Illinois / Elgin

Elgin
Illinois.

Public crossings21at grade, on the FRA inventory
With gates67%2 with no active device
Under a whistle ban2as last filed by the railroad
Reported incidents10Form 57, since 2016

The federal crossing inventory lists 21 public at-grade railroad crossings in Elgin, IL, operated by 5 railroads. 10 of them carry more than one track.

Who runs the track

Union Pacific Railroad Company operates 8 of the crossings here, 38% of the total, ahead of NORTHEAST ILLINOIS REGIONAL COMMUTER RAIL CORP. -- METRA at 8.

Train services crossing these streets: freight (14), commuter (4) and tourist/other (4).

RailroadCrossingsShare
Union Pacific Railroad Company838%
NORTHEAST ILLINOIS REGIONAL COMMUTER RAIL CORP. -- METRA838%
WISCONSIN CENTRAL LTD.210%
SOO Line Railroad Company210%
Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad15%

How much traffic is reported

The busiest crossing at Gifford Rd on NORTHEAST ILLINOIS REGIONAL COMMUTER RAIL CORP. -- METRA is credited with 72 train movements a day; the middle of the range across all 21 is 5. These are counts the operating railroad reported to the FRA, not measurements, and a crossing's figure can be several years old.

The highest timetable speed recorded at any crossing here is 70 mph.

Warning devices

14 of the 21 crossings carry gates and 5 have flashing lights without gates. 2 (10%) have neither, which means crossbucks, a stop sign, or no marking the inventory records at all. The inventory describes equipment, not how a crossing performs.

Horns and quiet zones

2 of the crossings (10%) are recorded under a whistle ban. A quiet zone is not silence: horns still sound for emergencies, track workers and at the engineer's discretion, and the status in the inventory is only as current as the last railroad filing.

Incident history

Form 57 records 10 reported incidents at these crossings since 2016, involving 4 deaths and 3 injuries. Incident counts follow traffic and exposure as much as anything about a crossing itself.

  • W Bartlett Rd — 2 reported incidents
  • W Chicago Street — 2 reported incidents
  • Lawrence Avenue — 1 reported incident
  • State Street/IL 31 — 1 reported incident
  • Gifford Rd — 1 reported incident

What this page is not

This is a summary of a federal inventory, not a measurement and not a rating. RailContext does not score crossings, streets or towns, and nothing here says a crossing is safe or unsafe, or that a neighbourhood is quiet or loud. Train counts are estimates the operating railroad filed, sometimes years ago, and a quiet zone does not guarantee silence.

To see the individual crossings nearest one address rather than a whole city, use the address check.

Other Illinois cities on the inventory

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