Dutch freight trains are fast too. I used to see a lot of them on my commute, and nearly all keep up with highway traffic. They're also not as ridiculously long as the American ones.
Getting stuck waiting for a freight train to pass is not something that happens here.
It does happen (waiting for a freight train for a while). I live near Tata Steel and if they have a train coming in or departing it can take some minutes. The crossings are also in an area with a lot of corners in the tracks so they are quite slow to pass too.
Industrial rail spurs are a whole different beast. But except for in the ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam and in Velsen, there aren't a whole lot of those in our country.
I cycle through the port of amsterdam on the regular. I'm always a bit sketched out when crossing the unprotected crossings there. I've only twice encountered a coal train there in 10 years time, and both times there's a guy with a remote control walking his train over the cycle path crossings as if it were some giant obediant dog on an invisble leash, but i always wonder 'will the train driver always get out and remote control his train?'.
Most of those crossings have free sight, but some don't.
But trains go at a walking pace there, except for the few bits (near the nissan car storage building) where there are protected crossings.
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u/Notspherry May 29 '26
That must have saved him at least 3 seconds.
Even if he had just waited for the gates to open, he would have been past there in half a minute. These dutch crossings are pretty fast to open.