Ah, another work-a-day week filled with the daily challenges of getting out of the house on time, pushing through the line at the coffee joint, fighting traffic on the roadways and beating that local 7:35 a.m. freighter as it lumbers over the Route 126 grade crossing northbound on the old EJ&E Railway.

Lately, I've been a bit annoyed by the train that crosses my path and temper almost every morning. The long train blocks up to six grade crossings in our town as it slowly approaches the crossing, slows down to a crawl and stops to wait for clearance to move ahead on the single-track trunk line.

Usually the wait is no more than 10 minutes. I know that a few minutes to wait for a train to go by may not seem like a long time, but it sure causes a huge back up of automobile and truck traffic in town and invokes a lot of anger especially when the train doesn't move from its dead stop.

And now the increase to my commute time is all explained. One snowy morning, a small salt-encrusted, slush-spattered sign appeared under the crossing lights at 126 and the EJ&E. Haphazardly attached to a barricade horse, the tiny 12-inch square sign simply said, "Notice: Increased train traffic." Gosh, I'm glad I didn't blink when the line of cars finally crossed the tracks--I'd have missed it.

And then a small article in the Village Voice newsletter announced that Canadian National Railways had acquired our humble EJ&E. I'd heard about the likelihood of the merger late last summer and wrote a column all about it. But, I can barely believe that the calendar pages have flipped by already. So I looked around for what the merger means to us now that it's here.

It's been reported that the Canadian National Railway is to take some measures ensuring school and pedestrian safety, significantly cover the costs for two underpasses and implement steps toward noise reduction. Also, they're to provide closed circuit video at existing crossings to assist in the timely response of emergency responders, namely the fire station at 119th Street.

I'm not sure how effective the pedestrian and school actions will be, but I suppose that some stretches of fencing would add security in the residential areas. It's unlikely that either of the two grade separation projects will affect Plainfield mainly because we've already got a major separation at Illinois 59.

Lots of other towns along the tracks have nothing and are more in need. Noise has already been reduced significantly by the whistle ban that went into place a year ago but there's more concern now about the squeals ringing out from friction between the tracks and wheels.

Video monitoring for grade crossings is a smart idea, especially for the new fire station at 119th--just a stone's throw east of the tracks. Should a call go out for an emergency, the dispatchers can quickly check the TV monitors for approaching trains and divert the fire engines if necessary. But, considering the importance of easy access to the community from a fire station, who'd build one right near a train track anyway?

That's barely enough, plus there's nothing in that merger package for my morning commute! Some would say that waiting for the morning train to clear hasn't been all that bad. As I sit with my fellow motorists in front of the red lights flashing in the morning mist, there's time to savor the overpriced coffee that's been splashing all over the cup-holder in the center console. The few idle minutes also lend themselves to some note taking toward planning a better to-do list for the day. Sometimes, there's even time to make a quick cell phone call to a distant relative or old friend from the relative safety of an idling car.

Looking further down the neck of that glass half full, people add that CN's acquisition of the EJ&E may actually decrease the morning delays such as the ones I've been experiencing. Maybe train operation through our area will be smoother as it's suggested, but I'm not totally certain. So, I ran some experiments on the model train layout downstairs in the basement to explore a specific scenario.

When I considered the hypothesis for the test, I have to admit that my eyes glazed over and I froze for a moment. Images of a tired and tenured math teacher flashed before my eyes as I thought of resurrecting that classic high school algebra equation. You know, the one that deals with two trains leaving stations heading toward each other at different rates of speed. But then I remembered the abject futility of that old exercise, powered up the transformers and ran some trains around the oval layout.

According to my pseudo-scientific study downstairs, it was determined that only a small number of trains can traverse a single line of track. The details of the test also showed that when trains ran in opposing directions (i.e. toward each other), often one train had to be shunted to a siding and await clearance until the other passed by.

Applying the results of this experiment to the real-life model, Canadian National plans to improve the entire route by, among other things, adding track that facilitates non-stop two-way traffic. This means that there would be enough track to allow trains traveling in opposite directions to pass each other smoothly without interruption.

That might imply that smoother, faster running trains that don't stop for one another yields shorter grade crossing times and, ultimately, happier drivers and happier residents.

Yet in the end, more tracks mean that there will still be more trains going through town than I have circling on my basement railroad layout laboratory. And Canadian National has shown little respect for the influx of rail traffic that we're about to tolerate.