RICHMOND, Va. -- Richmond is known around the world for its triple-decker railroad crossing.
It's totally unique, a treasured transportation oddity in Shockoe Bottom that is more than 100 years old.
Rail fans hunger to witness three trains crossing together here.
It's been more than 20 years since the last time, and it's only happened a few times.
"It's pretty amazing," says Jeff Majer, a history buff and blogger who has given tours of the area. "It's not the only one ever, but it's the only one that still exists.
"From my experience in doing a lot of tours," he added, "there's a lot of people that are kind of waiting for that" to happen again.
The question is, why don't we do it again?
I think it would be cool if we did it every five years. If we do it more often it would steal its own thunder.
Imagine, perhaps, an antique dining and passenger train on the bottom track, with freighters or coal trains rumbling above.
Add in a band, beer trucks, kayaks and canoes in the canal below. There's even a Triple Crossing Brewery in town that has some appropriate suds.
The problem, of course, is logistics, explained George Saunders with the Richmond Railway Museum.
These are working tracks, particularly the top two.
The last triple crossing "had a cooperation between CSX, which run the first two (upper) tracks and the Norfolk Southern has the third track on the bottom," Saunders said. "And they had a photo op… people lined up to take photographs of it. It was a pretty good turnout, yes."
Checking online, I found what appeared to be video of a natural occurrence of the triple crossing, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Majer believes all the triple-crossing photos taken over the past 105 years were staged photo ops.
But that's still pretty cool, right?
So you're asking yourself, who's going to organize this?
Why not CSX? Every day thousands of their coal cars thunder through the city. And it's rare not to hear a blaring train horn somewhere in the city.
I think they can give us a treat every five years or so.
The site, by the way, can be seen from the pedestrian walk bridge over the canal between Byrd and Canal streets a half block east of 14th Street.
Friends, we are known far and wide as THE triple-crossing city.
Let's be that, and toot our own horns as we make a party of it.
