The grade crossing at Rosecrans and Marquardt in Santa Fe Springs sees an estimated 135 trains (a mix of BNSF freights and Amtrak and Metrolink passenger trains) and 45,000 highway vehicles per day. This grade crossing, at milepost 157.81 on BNSF Railway’s San Bernardino Sub, passes through the intersection of these two streets, and not only does all the rail traffic interrupt the flow of highway traffic – reportedly 21 hours per week – but it makes frustrated drivers take more chances than usual, resulting in 31 vehicle-train collisions from 2013 through 2019, resulting in six deaths and seven injuries. Due to the high volume of railroad traffic, BNSF wants to add a third mainline through here – in fact, when this photo was taken in 2017, much of the new main’s trackage was already in place on either side of the grade crossing. Now, after several years of buying property and relocating nearby businesses, construction is set to begin in 2022 on a highway overpass to eliminate this dangerous confluence of highway and rail traffic. This $156-million project is expected to be completed in 2025. As a result, scenes such as this, with an eastbound BNSF double-stack train led by ES44DC 7220 bisecting both streets, and holding up a high volume of traffic as it does, will soon become a thing of the past. (Santa Fe Springs, California – November 11, 2017)
