From PDX? Most likely SEA, OAK, LAX, or ORD. There are major tracks belonging to UP heading south to the Bay Area and Los Angeles and west to the entire Midwest (following the Columbia River Gorge) as well as major tracks belonging to BNSF heading north to Seattle and west to Chicago (via Spokane also along the Columbia River Gorge--BNSF owns the tracks on the Washington side while UP owns the tracks on the Oregon side).

There are also some shortlines running smaller loads along lower-traffic, shorter-distance routes, such as the PNWR out towards Astoria (Tongue Point), the WPRR to various farming areas in the Willamette Valley and out to Newport on the Oregon Coast, and even the CORP heading down to Coos Bay. Those routes are probably lucky to see one medium-length train per day, though, so I doubt you're seeing those. You're most likely seeing the big UP or BNSF boys heading hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Check these maps out:
http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/maps/sysmap.shtml
http://www.bnsf.com/customers/where-...ditional-maps/

Who to complain to? Probably your city councilman or the mayor. The railroad's operations department probably won't care about an individual complaint from someone stuck in traffic, but it might not hurt to try. First you'll need to identify which railroad to complain to. Arrive at your crossing early enough to see the locomotives on the front. While that's not a completely foolproof way to check, since railroads often do have "trackage rights" on their competitors' tracks and even borrow locomotives from one another, it's a start. Then, check their website for contact options and go from there. You'll of course need to be able to describe which crossing is being blocked--the best way would be to look for a sign near the crossing gates about reporting an emergency and seeing if it has any identifying information; failing that, name the street you're on and perhaps take note of the nearest cross street, since other tracks belonging to that railroad may cross your street at different places.

Train scheduling is largely done without regard to local issues, though--for one, the tracks were usually there first, and second, the railroads have a much bigger logistical picture to be aware of. Not only do they have to factor other traffic (for example, your 10:10 train may be scheduled for a slot on the transcontinental line to Kansas City in between a 9:55 train taking lumber, propane, grain, and other goods to Walla Walla and a 10:30 intermodal train coming down from the Port of Seattle headed to Chicago. All three need to use the same track east of Portland, and like airplanes, they need to be spaced apart enough to allow them to travel safely. Delaying your 10:10 affects the 10:30 transcon to Chicago, which can have repercussions ranging from tangling with Wyoming coal train traffic to blocking major crossings in Chicago right at the 8:00am rush hour to having goods arrive in Chicago too late for their customers' cutoffs.

Absolutely. Take a peek at the tables in this Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_ef...transportation

You can see how much more fuel efficient rail travel is compared to truck travel and especially air freight.

And as I mentioned above, "the places it needs to be" can be thousands of miles from you. When looking at a picture that big, the little inconveniences along the way don't look all that important.

Absolutely. Many, many factors go into planning the train schedules (not even counting "extras" that are called as need arises). Crossing blockages are not high up on the priority list.

The Alaska Railroad recently announced a special site for people affected by the movements of gravel trains:

http://www.alaskarailroad.com/corpor...9/Default.aspx

From that site:

I find it interesting that the railroad lays the blame for daytime crossing blockages squarely at the feet of local noise ordinances. (A well-intentioned ordinance by some overzealous local assemblyman has, as always happens in government, unintended consequences.) It also does a pretty good job of explaining why that has to happen (it takes just about 12 hours to take the train out to the quarries in Palmer and Wasilla, load them with gravel, bring the train back into Anchorage, and dump the gravel at the local processing facilities).

The one thing I'd add to your quote above is that the railroads--particularly UP--pay little attention to passenger train scheduling. They own the tracks, and they're obviously interested in making the most money they can with their own movements. Despite a federal mandate (created when Amtrak was formed in 1971) giving passenger trains priority, the railroads have historically treated Amtrak as the red-headed stepchild of the transportation industry. Next time your Amtrak train is late, you'll know who to blame.

Only thing I'd mention about the above is that, unless contracts have been renegotiated in the last year (I haven't paid attention since then), UPS uses rail transport heavily while FedEx chooses to use team-driven trucks. It's the rare case, if ever, when FedEx goods travel by rail. UPS, in contrast, is one of the largest customers of the rail industry. Ultra-high-priority trains like the ZLACWSP ("hot," high-priority Z train from Los Angeles, California to Willow SPrings, IL, near UPS's giant CACH (Chicago Area Consolidated Hub) on the historic and important AT&SF Transcon route paralleling I-40 and the reverse ZWSPLAC) are virtually dedicated to UPS's important ground operation and are scheduled precisely to depart from and arrive at the given sorting hubs just in time for their respective sort operations. Check out this thread for some potentially interesting info from the train nuts over at TrainOrders:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,185021

According to a UPS official, UPS will try to move goods moving more than 700 miles away by rail. Shorter movements are generally better done by truck.

More cool info about how UPS works with CACH here:

http://www.trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=a&id=549

And an interesting article about the modern state of intermodal freight transport:

http://www.worldtrademag.com/Article...00000000726114

See above. Semi-trucks are used on shorter but denser hauls (under 400-700 miles). For example, if you drop off a shipment in St. Cloud, Minnesota destined for Sacramento, California, your shipment would probably follow a route like this:

VAN: St. Cloud to Minneapolis
18-WHEELER: Minneapolis to Chicago (CACH)
TRAIN (ZWSPRIC): Chicago to Richmond, CA (Bay Area)
18-WHEELER: Richmond to Sacramento
VAN: Sacramento to your recipient

If you were shipping from St. Cloud to Lincoln, NE, you may see something more like this:
VAN: St. Cloud to Minneapolis
18-WHEELER: Minneapolis to Omaha
18-WHEELER: Omaha to Lincoln
VAN: Lincoln to recipient

If there were enough traffic between Minneapolis and Lincoln, you might even see an 18-wheeler go directly between the two, skipping Omaha.

Correct. In the summer, a full train (100 cars per day) heads north from Anchorage filled with lumber, chemicals processed out of state, and even construction equipment (shovels, tractors, etc.) and all kinds of raw goods. Most of these arrive either on the container ships docking in Anchorage or the specialized rail barges docking in Whittier, which actually bring entire railcars pre-stocked with goods up from the Lower 48 (the railcars are then offloaded directly onto the Alaska Railroad's tracks in Whittier and taken through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel to Anchorage for sorting and then onto Fairbanks in the northbound daily freight. At the same time as the freight is going north, a 100-car train of tankers is bringing Jet-A and unleaded fuel south from the North Pole Refinery just outside of Fairbanks (of course, 12 hours later, those trains are heading back the opposite way empty). It takes two tank cars to fill a 747 (which, as participants in the http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/commu...14-2010-a.html know, is by far the most common aircraft at ANC; ANC is a major refueling point for TransPac cargo flights, and cargo represents 75% of the airport's revenue), and each tank car can carry the equivalent of three tanker trucks. That's a lot of gas! In addition, in the summertime, the ARR runs a daily northbound and daily southbound passenger train to Fairbanks, a daily round-trip passenger to Seward, and three to four daily gravel trains between Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley. In addition, there's a once- or twice-weekly coal train from the Usibelli coal mine near Denali National Park to the port in Seward, where it is loaded onto ships bound for South Korea. That's not counting the numerous local trains delivering anywhere from one to ten cars to individual customers along the railway. (In the winter, that traffic drops down to one combined daily fuel/freight and one weekly passenger train.) That volume pales in comparison, though, to a major rail terminal like PDX!