The Barrier at Hipodrom Stays Up While Trains Pass: Its Bolts Had Been Set in Concrete

A freight train rolls along the track that cuts across the street at Hipodrom, and the barrier stays up. Residents shared the video in the Facebook group "Wall of Gazi Baba Municipality", worried about the drivers and pedestrians who use that crossing every day.

According to people in the comments, the train drivers know about the problem: the train whistles from a distance as a warning and slows almost to a stop before crossing. So the safety of this crossing in the capital rests on a whistle and a careful driver.

This isn't the first time. Before this, the barrier stood permanently open for almost a whole month. One resident in the comments has his own explanation: "While Mitko was there, the barrier worked. He retired, the barrier stopped working, and there's nobody to maintain it."

"Macedonian Railways - Infrastructure" says it is aware of the problem and that its crews are on site. The explanation from the assistant director for electrical installations, Toni Gjurevski, is worth reading twice: crews from the public enterprise "Streets and Roads" are cutting concrete where the barrier stands to get the bolts out, because the bolts had been set in concrete, which is why the barrier doesn't work.

The bolts of a railway barrier, set in concrete. Who poured it? When? Did someone doing work on the street pour concrete over the barrier mechanism, with nobody from the railway noticing until residents posted a video? Now two public enterprises are working on a problem that was obviously made by human hands.

While the concrete is being cut, the trains will keep whistling. The question is how many more times they'll have to whistle before someone says who buried the mechanism in concrete.