Onibury's the level crossing where the A49 crosses the line that runs up the Welsh Marches on the skew. Line speed I don't know but it may be 90mph. Driving the A49 northbound on Friday, the A49 has a traffic lights controlled contraflow, the southbound carriageway being out of use for some hundreds of metres. The contraflow extends across the crossing. Especially because the level crossing has a road junction immediately north of it, the arrangement felt a bit perilous, with the risk of traffic queues forming across the level crossing itself. Concentrating on driving, I didn't note what it was that made me feel uneasy - and by now, the entire contraflow may be history.

I've noooooh idea of the precautions that need to be taken when road works / contraflows are combined with level crossings, but presumably Network Rail gets involved and is involved in signing things off?

Mark

Thanks for this, that explains a lot. I think one of the things that had alarmed me was that drivers tend to be nose to tail through contraflows and weren't modifying this as they crossed the railway - and the northbound end of the contraflow was close to the crossing itself and there's often a tendency for people to slow down there too - and then there's the road junction as well. I was looking ahead and seeing apparent safety margins evaporate - but with signalling staff on site, the gates raised and interlocked with the railway control systems that's reassuring. (It does show how easy it is for many drivers of vehicles to disregard the basic principle of 'Do not enter a railway crossing until your exit is clear' though. It can be useful for people who may otherwise be distracted, when they need to cross a railway, to think of each individual railway line as one blade of a pair of scissors - so, double track railway = two entirely separate pairs of scissors - and before stepping over the one blade you need to be sure that the other one isn't due to descend.)

Mark