Earlier this year, I wrote about a train-crossing episode that seemed intriguingly inexplicable (“Comfortable in the Mystery Zone,” Jan. 24). Driving north on Oak Park Avenue on a cold winter night, I was stopped by the crossing arms at the tracks near the Mars Candy plant (alas, no more). I was late for an appointment and uttered a deeply felt challenge to the universe: “Why does this always happen to me when I’m late?!” (or words to that effect).
Then suddenly the arms lifted and I was able to cross, even though I saw the bright light of a freight train down the tracks in the distance, apparently not moving. And when I looked back in the rear-view mirror, the arms were descending again.
The episode made me briefly reconsider my notions about divine intervention — and mystery’s place in a largely explainable universe.
In that column, I wrote:
“Many would be tempted to view this as some supernatural intervention in response to my ‘prayer,’ but it wasn’t a prayer really, more of a beseeching whine, even though it came from deep within. Others would assure me there must be some ‘perfectly logical explanation.’
“I didn’t surrender to either side. All I knew was it felt eerily unreal, extravagantly pleasant, and deliciously inexplicable. Maybe God was sick of hearing me complain that such things ‘always happen to me,’ and wanted to shut me up. If so, it worked. I will never again say such annoyances ‘always’ happen. ‘Often’ maybe, but not ‘always.’ I’m cured.
“There may well be a logical explanation for what happened that night. Maybe this is simply protocol when a train has temporarily halted. Maybe the human, not divine, overseer cuts the drivers uptrack a break until the train gets clearance to continue. If so, the railroad folks have become a whole lot more considerate of vehicular traffic than they used to be — and deserve our thanks for it.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin tracking down that logical explanation. Maybe some railroad buff reading this will provide it.”
And that’s precisely what happened. The following week, a reader familiar with the ways of railroads sent the following logical explanation:
“Grade crossing signals work on a small electrical charge that is placed into each rail. The charge runs down the track away from the crossing for a specified length, then hits an insulator that stops the charge from running down the track any further. The distance between the insulators on either end of the grade crossing is sometimes called ‘the circuit.’
“When a train enters the circuit, the metal wheels and axle complete an electrical connection between the two rails, indicating to the equipment in the bungalow near the crossing that a train has occupied the circuit, activating the warning devices. The spacers are set far enough away from the crossing to provide adequate warning of the approach of the fastest moving authorized speed for on-track equipment.
“Originally, the signals would activate any time a train shunted the circuit, but that resulted in very slow-moving trains causing the roadside signals to be on, sometimes for minutes at a time, encouraging lawbreakers to slalom around the gates. So ‘constant warning time’ circuitry was developed. It not only senses the presence of an on-track vehicle, it also calculates the speed of the vehicle, and activates the warning devices at the crossing just in time to provide 20 seconds of warning before the front of the train enters the roadway crossing.
“Additionally, if the bungalow senses that the on-track equipment has stopped, the active warning device issues a ‘time out,’ and the gates will go back up, only to restart if the on-track equipment restarts its movement toward the crossing. This sounds like what happened in your example.
“Obviously, I wasn’t there, and don’t know that the gates timed out, but that sounds exactly like what you described.”
I was mildly disappointed, but my explicator was kind enough to sympathize with my hunger for mystery, writing:
“This is not to say that serendipity isn’t a real thing, or that we shouldn’t rejoice in the many blessings that the world brings us daily. I don’t think the world is any less glorious simply because the curtain is pulled back and we can see the mechanics behind life’s daily events.”
I agreed and replied, “Quite a complex mechanism. You might call it a small miracle in itself.”
It took me a while to revisit this column and share the explanation with those of you who recall the incident. What finally got me moving again was my latest visit to “the Mystery Zone”: The 2024 Presidential campaign has me pinching myself because of the remarkable sequence of events that have transpired since the June 27 debate between Biden and Trump.
Those events, too, probably have a perfectly reasonable human explanation. And there is still plenty of hard, human work left to do to save our country from the train wreck we were heading for.
Nonetheless if all goes well this Nov. 5, a small part of me will once again be wondering:
Maybe someone, or something, is helping us get back on-track.