but COOL.

It started raining in the mid-afternoon.

I was headed home. In order to there I have to cross railroad tracks.

This is ordinarily no big deal. The horns toot, the drop gates drop, and the train comes through.

Most of the trains are freight trains, of widely varying lengths.

Today it was a looong train. And something may have happened to the dropgates so they didn't come up immediately after the train (eventually) finished passing through.

The speed with which the traffic backed up was mind-boggling. I think it was backed up a couple of miles in each direction--on each of the several streets that crossed the tracks.

I was near the front, and got to see workers trying to get gates back up and otherwise open up the road (again) to vehicular traffic.

Eventually the traffic began to move. And in a surprisingly short time was more or less back to normal. I was headed out of town (as opposed to the big commercial area) so I didn't have very far to go before traffic was normal.

From where I sat, the people caught up in the mess were generally taking it in stride. "Stuff" happens.

I hope tomorrow's paper tells just what the problem was.

And I hope tomorrow doesn't have the rain that today has had.