Notes on railroad crossing records
Tan Solutions builds Rail Crossing Atlas, a free site for the federal record of every U.S. railroad crossing. These notes go deeper than the atlas's short guides: how the records are kept, what their fields mean, and how to read them without overreading them.
How these notes are written
Every figure comes from Rail Crossing Atlas or from the FRA dataset itself, with the date it was read. The current figures are from the FRA inventory of 3 November 2026. Every rule is checked against the regulation's current text, and every note ends with its sources.
The notes describe records. They never rank crossings or places, and a count in a record is a report, not a measurement taken on the day you read it.
- How the U.S. railroad crossing inventory is kept and updatedWho files each crossing record, the two deadlines that keep records current, and what one week of changes in the federal inventory looked like.
- Reading a railroad crossing record, field by fieldWhat each part of a federal crossing record says, which form box it comes from, and how old its train and road counts can be.
- Public and private railroad crossings: where the line fallsThe federal test for a public crossing, how the national total divides, why some records have no type, and which deadlines apply only to public crossings.
- Signs, lights and gates: how the crossing inventory records warning devicesThe form boxes behind every statement about crossing equipment, how counts become the national groups, and the three-month rule for device changes.
- How a city sets up a railroad quiet zone under 49 CFR Part 222The minimum requirements for a new quiet zone, the Notice of Intent and the establishment notice, and why every step starts with the crossing records.
- Railroad crossings state by state, and how to read the countsAn alphabetical table of all and public crossings in each state, what each column counts, and how to compare two states without mixing totals.
- Closures, reopenings and bridges in the crossing recordsWhat counts as a closed crossing, how closures reach the record, reported closures and reopenings by decade, and the grade-separated records.