Today I continue my quest in creating and posting one block a day of the fabulous That Town And Country Quilt by the lovely Susan Claire. This is day one hundred and fifty-three of that project.

This quilt block shows a railroad crossing against a light blue salmon-patterned background. There is the end of an orange fence on the left, and in front of the crossing signal on the right is another piece of orange fence. The crossing signal has a brown post and at the top are two large two holed buttons, one bright red and one bright yellow, indicating the lights. There is a striped diagonal lighter brown, yellow, and orange strip of fabric coming out of the post at an angle representing the guard that lowers to stop cars from going on the tracks. — Click To Enlarge

Here is a road crossing for the train tracks.

There are oversized lights on the signal post; Julie ordered them special. She thinks they are prettier this way.

When you have to stop for the train to go down the track, it’s never for very long, and you have a chance to wave at everyone on the train.

It’s not like the long coal trains that seem to go on forever. We had to stop for a coal train in Wyoming once, and it was so long that we got out, stretched our legs, and had a snack, and we still watched the train for a long time.

I watched the coal cars and thought of stories I’d read about people who had gotten in the car to hide or sleep and didn’t get out before the coal went in.

Speculation has been that some of those people didn’t get in there on their own.

It’s hard to know what happened after 100 tons of coal was dumped on them.