By By Adam Prestridge
Crews with CSX Transportation's maintenance division have been working vigorously the past week to repair the many railroad crossings throughout the city limits of Atmore.
According to Meg Sacks, a spokesperson with CSX's corporate office located in Jacksonville, Fla., the repairs are part of continuous maintenance work to ensure the safety of the trains that travel the 1,000 miles of tracks in Alabama and to make trips over the crossings pleasant.
"We have maintenance teams currently in Atmore and they are going to repair everything that has to do with the crossing," Sacks said. "They are going to replace the tracks, the rails, the crossties, the ballast and they will resurface each of the crossings with new asphalt."
Work began last Monday on the crossing at Martin Luther King Drive. Crews will continue to work until all the CSX crossings are repaired with the exception of the Main Street crossing.
"The one street they won't repair is Main Street because it was done last year," Sacks said. "They expect to be done by the week of Feb. 11 depending on the weather. They will organize it so that the folks in Atmore can still access businesses on the other side of the tracks. There should be two or three crossings open at the same time, which will give people access to the other side of the tracks."
The following is a list of the upcoming railroad crossing closings:
The dates for the Ray Circle and Swift Mill crossing repairs are subject to change.
The CSX maintenance crews follow tight timelines for repairs and should be completed on or near the scheduled completion date, Sacks said.
"They are pretty efficient," she said. "They work hard. It's a tough job, but has to be done. We have teams that travel across the system throughout the year performing this work."
According to Sacks, CSX has approximately 16,000 crossings on its system that are public crossings. In the state of Alabama alone, there are about 1,300 crossings and nearly 1,000 miles of tracks.
"There is a crossing about every mile in Alabama," she said. "To make sure the trains operate safely and motorists have smooth crossings to cross."