Train Tracks and Marathons Don't Mix

The Quad Cities Marathon last Sunday had an unfortunate problem: two trains interrupted the race for several runners. The marathon course happened to cross some railroad tracks, and the train officials failed to cooperate with the race officials. Apparently, this frustrated the race director so much that he actually parked his pace truck on the tracks that went across the course at around mile 22. This forced the train to stop and allowed the runners to finish without interference. It also caused a lot of commotion with the train's engineer. Luckily, the train was able to stop. I guess it was going slow enough or had a small enough load that it was able stop. I've heard that it can take a train thousands of feet for it to make a complete stop.