Interesting thread to stumble upon..
I'm not a railfan, but when I moved up to my P3P I started thinking of locations that would make for some great video. One that popped up was a railroad bridge not far from here that passes high above the Allegheny river, and I thought video of a train crossing that bridge would make a pretty cool shot. So I started scouting the location to see what I'd need to do to make it work.
A couple of times now I've run across railroad staff up there while flying my P3P, and they have always been very nice about it (the one was quite interested in the drone and thought it was really cool).
Their stance, when pressed for specifics of what I was, and was not allowed to do boiled down to this.
If anyone from the railroad was up there working (aka, track or train maintenance, etc, etc) I was not allowed on RR property as it was a liability and they'd be in trouble if I got hurt. I was also told in an "off the record" sort of way that as long as they were not up there working, nobody would bother me as long as I stayed clear of the tracks (active railroad and all) and didn't touch anything.
I was also told that even if they were working there, if I took off and landed from non RR property and didn't interfere with their work I could fly OVER the tracks and trains from a safe altitude.
http://i.imgur.com/pzofYc6.jpg
This was from a cold morning when they were doing maintenance on one of the engines.. Flew through 2 full batteries shooting video and stills, part of the time with a RR employee next to me enthusiastically checking the screen out.
Still waiting for my shot to get video of the train crossing the bridge
Now of course..
A: this was B&LE railroad, not BNSF.. B&LE is a MUCH smaller operation, so that may be a factor.
B: This wasn't exactly some "official" stance of the railroad, just the result of a few conversations with local staff working the tracks/trains.
Interesting how vastly different our experiences have been on it. There's a pretty heavily photographed railroad bend (
Horse Shoe Curve) not too far away I've been meaning to go fly over, a quick google search returns many drone flights over those tracks and no mentions of anyone having any problems.