Topher Sanders and Dan Schwartz, ProPublica:
Every day across America, [trains] park in the middle of neighborhoods and major intersections, waiting to enter congested rail yards or for one crew to switch with another. They block crossings, sometimes for hours or days, disrupting life and endangering lives.
[…]
In Hammond [Illinois], the hulking trains of Norfolk Southern regularly force parents, kids and caretakers into an exhausting gamble: How much should they risk to get to school?
For their part, the Norfolk Southern executives sound like lovely people:
[The Hammond school district] has asked Norfolk Southern for its schedule so that the schools can plan for blockages and students can adjust their routines. The company has disregarded the requests, school officials said.
Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said that his experience with the rails has been similar, and that company officials have reminded him the rails “were here first,” running through Hammond before it was even a city.
Click through to the article for some of the most powerful and nerve-racking photojournalism I have ever seen.
Less than a week after publishing the above investigation, Sanders and Schwartz wrote a brief follow-up:
Within 48 hours of an investigation about children having to crawl under parked trains to get to school in an Indiana suburb, residents packed a public meeting to demand solutions, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a safety advisory, a bipartisan group of Indiana lawmakers sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation pleading for change and Norfolk Southern’s CEO, Alan Shaw, got involved.
[…]
The day after the story was published, [Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr.] got a call from [Norfolk Southern’s CEO, Alan Shaw], who told him he was shocked by the situation in Hammond and wanted to help fix it. “I don’t want to divulge too much about what we talked about, but if it works out the way I hope it does, it will be spectacular,” the mayor said.