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As an interim measure to reduce the potential for accidents at the Old Cedartown Rd rail crossing on the Silver Comet Trail, I’ve designed a couple of signs.  The first sign conveys the severity of the hazard and second sign is a guide for cyclists on appropriate methods to cross the rails without having their wheels trapped in the rail flange.  I plan to deploy the warning signs on both sides of the trail pending approval by the Path Foundation and GRITS.

The first sign is intended to convey the severity of the hazard:  (click images to enlarge)

RxR Crash Hazard

The second sign encourages riders to dismount and walk their bikes over the rails or ride over at an angle perpendicular to the rails:

RxR Crossing Methods

Friday, I was perplexed to see that someone was attempting to cut back the intrusive growth along the Silver Comet Trail with a weed eater (string trimmer).  Of course, they didn’t get to far.

I’ve been looking at the Shindawa and Echo pole mounted hedge trimmers for awhile now.  Hedge trimmers need to be pole mounted and well balanced so you can easily cut high and low.  A regular gas powered hedge trimmer can be a real pain-in-the-back to try and use for trail work.  As an experiment,  I stopped by Home Depot and picked up a hedge trimmer attachment for my Ryobi 2-cycle Expand-It power unit.  An $80 experiment is certainly cheaper than $400 to purchase the Echo unit.

I picked one of the worst areas along the Silver Comet Trail, heavily over-grown with kudzu and privet, at mile marker 16.  One section here had intruded nearly a foot into the trail path.    Definitely a valid test case to see how well this non-commercial grade hedger would work.

This is how the area looked when I started:  (click image to enlarge)

Encroaching Shrubbery.

This is probably 40-50 ft of dense shrubbery that needed trimming.   Starting after work and late in the evening, the cutting went surprisingly well.  I did better than I had expected and was able to trim back this entire section.

Trimmed Section at MM16.

I should have brought a rake, I had to leave the trimmings piled next to the trail.

Tunnel Clean-Up

I was planning a Spring Tunnel Clean-up Day, but thanks to our friend Jim Brannon aka “Santa”, it won’t be necessary. Jim organized the work Friday, with his little “Green Tractor” and the help of two young men, Lance and Christian donating time for their Community Service. Lance and Christian cleared the drains, squeegeed the accumulated water, then swept and blew out the entire tunnel. The tunnel was looking a bit shabby after our long winter and with the current higher humidity, water was already starting to accumulate in the tunnel. By the next day the tunnel was looking great.

Tunnel Clean-up.

I arrived a bit later and helped with cleaning up the leaves, rock and debris along the North side of the west entrance and in the rock sitting area. I don’t know how many times we filled up the bucket of Jim’s tractor, but I bet it was at least a dozen…(I should have gotten a picture). I did get some picture the next day.

Tunnel, West Entrance.

Rock sitting area.

Verizon Cable Replacement
During the recent storm the Verizon fiber segment between Mc Pherson Church Rd and the Brushy Mountain Tunnel was struck by lightning three times requiring replacement of the cable. I went up Friday to see what they were doing and to make sure they planned on restoring the drainage. I don’t like mud on the trail.

Verizon cable replacement.

Background: After posting the previous story about the hazardous condition of the RxR crossings on the Silver Comet Trail, I had several responses from Facebook readers that had crashed, or been involved with bicycle crashes on the RxR tracks on Old Cedartown Rd.  I thought this warranted additional investigation.

Summary:  Based on analysis of track angle from Google Maps photos I found that the CSX track crossed Old Cedartown Rd at an approximate 25° skew angle.   The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)  2010 Guide for the Planning, Design and Operation of Bicycle Facilities, states the  “If the skew angle is less than 45°, special attention should be given to the bikeway alignment to improve the angle of approach, preferably to 60° or greater, so bicyclists can avoid  catching their wheels in the flange and losing their balance.” The skew angle of the CSX RxR tracks on Old Cedartown Rd exceed the minimum suggested skew angle for un-improved rail flanges by 40°.   As part of this report I have a prepared a suggested approach to correct this problem, which will have a minimal impact on local vehicular traffic and marginal cost to implement.

The CSX RxR crossing on Old Cedartown Rd tracks are oriented at an excessive skew angle and pavement is in poor condition. Very hazardous to bicycle traffic, especially considering that this crossing is part of a recreational trail which would be used by children or seniors that would not be reasonably expected to have special training to cross such hazards safely.

(Click images to enlarge)

RxR crossing OldCedartown Rd.

To determine the skew angle of the railroad tacks I used a computer to analyze the relative angles from a Google Maps image.  The image from Google Maps is shown below.

RxR-OldCedartown Rd Map

I color annotated the map image:  blue is the Silver Comet Trail, green is Old Cedartown Rd, dashed-red is the railroad.

To determine the skew angle of the railroad tacks I used a computer to analyze the relative angles from a Google Maps image.  I rotated an orange line segment that was coincident with the road, to align with the tracks.  The rotation was 25°.

RxR, Old Cedartown Rd skew angle.

Clearly, the current design needs to be fixed.  An ideal crossing angle would be 90°. I rotated the orange line perpendicular to the tracks and aligned it with the north entrance to the Silver Comet Trail. This approximates an ideal crossing situation; shortest distance and perpendicular to the tracks.

RxR, OldCedartown Rd Crossing, Improved

If a concrete ramp and pad were added to the south entrance to the Silver Comet Trail (yellow line), it would significantly shorten the distance traveled on public roads and provide an improved crossing situation for the railroad tracks. Also the addition of a HiRail pad for the pedestrian and bicycle traffic would create an ideal and safe crossing.

HiRAIL Rubber Grade Crossing

We’ve run the trail blower > 370 miles for 2011.
I was able to run the trail blower Thursday and Friday, for 100 miles. Due to recent heavy rains in the Rockmart area, several of the sections were flooded and others had excessive washout of silt and rock. Rains were so heavy the river rose sufficiently to deposit silt on the Silver Comet Trail bridge over the river in Rockmart. Silting was very heavy in sections of the river walk in Rockmart too. Sections of the trail east and west of Rockmart were still flooded. Debris washout was so heavy in some areas that a torrent took down farm fencing, which was propped back into place. I suspect this area encountered a micro burst as many branches were broken from trees too.

Flood damaged fence and debris.

Flooding at a narrow section of the trail west of the Atlanta Rd over-crossing was covering the trail. Debris accumulation was forcing the water over the trail.

Trail flooding west of the Atlanta Rd crossing.

Thursday, I shoveled the debris clear allowing the water to drain along the trail.  When I returned  Friday the section was dry (one damp spot).  I used the trail blower to clear the debris and silt.  This is how that trail section looked late Friday.  Viewed from the opposite direction, also note the effective drainage on the right in the section that Jim Brannon had cleared with his tractor.

Cleaned section west of the Atlanta Rd over-crossing.

The trail entrance to the tunnel under GA Hwy6 at the junction with US278 was covered with  mud,  again.  I shot a video expressing my thoughts about the poor drainage design.

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YouTube Direkt

The low section of the trail between US278 and Old Cedartown was flooded at several points.  Debris dams were preventing runoff, plus work needs to be done to improve drainage.  I shot a video here too…  you can see how much water was flowing across here after a removed a portion of the debris dam.  The cyclist riding through “the pond” was not staged.

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YouTube Direkt

After cleaning the remainder of the trail to Alabama and returning, much of the water had drained.  The pool was much smaller and there was almost a rideable margin.

Flooded section, slightly improved.

Past Landfill hill there was a lot of rock washout from the rain.  Lots of rock and gravel dried into the mud.  It took a lot of shoveling and broom work to break it loose for the blower to clean-up.  The upper section did have some large rocks which would be very dangerous on a descent.

Rock washout west of Landfill Hill.

Fortunately, the section west of Cedartown wasn’t nearly as bad.  Nothing that required special attention with a shovel or broom.  It was a long hard day of work, but I did get to eat dinner at Frankie’s and Jim Brannon picked up the tab.

Thanks Jim!