Though the sight is familiar to many Chicagoans, folks braving their first Midwest winter or those who’ve never seen the phenomenon may be surprised to see small fires burning along Metra railroad tracks as a brutal cold front freezes the region.
Video captured by an NBC Chicago photographer Friday morning showed flames lighting up the Metra tracks near the Western Avenue station on the city’s West Side.
The transportation agency uses the fiery technique to keep ice accumulation at bay during periods of extreme cold, like during Friday’s blistery sub-zero wind chills.
Though it may look like the tracks themselves are on fire, the flames come from gas-fed heaters located along the railway, most often at switch points.
The heaters are manually lit by Metra workers to help keep ice from accumulating on the tracks, possibly leading to service delays.
Ice can not only cause train wheels to slip on the rails, but it can also slow down the switches or cause them to stop working altogether.
Metra reduced their schedule Friday amid the cold snap to limit the number of trains passing through switch points on the rails.
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