I originally planned to photograph a MÁV fence myself with a camera borrowed from someone I visit for Christmas today. However, I didn't foresee how rare and how decrepit these fences have became - and for some reason there were clouds above me wherever I went... To cut a long story short, I only made crappy pictures today - so I post three just as comments:

Old barrier guard's house at one end of Magyarkút-Verőce station (on a branchline North of Budapest)

EC 279 "Jaroslav Hašek", headed by Slovakian multi-phase locomotive [series] 350 [no.] 017, dashes through Nagymaros station (in the big bend of the Danube North of Budapest)

Back end of [series] BDVmot [no.] 011 electric multiple unit, which just reached Nagymaros station as a stopping train

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

allowed trespassing to cautious pedestrians besides road level crossings, even if barriers were closed

We're also the ones who came up with the Maginot line!!

About such suggested barriers, the best notion of one I ever read about is in Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed".

I found an excerpt available on line:

There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb, it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an, idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. On the field there were a couple of large gantry cranes, a rocket pad, three warehouses, a truck garage, and a dormitory. The dormitory looked durable, grimy, and mournful; it had no gardens, no children; plainly nobody lived there or was even meant to stay there long. It was in fact a quarantine. The wall shut in not only the landing field but also the ships that came down out of space, and the men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest of the universe. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free.

Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine.

At the terminal of the Pike's Peak Cog Railway the track just dead-ends at the top of the mountain. I'm hoping to get onto one of the last runs of the year this week; they close down after New Year's Day because of the snow.

A related point of interest is the AdAmAn club, which since 1922 has added one member per year to enjoy the fun of climbing Pike's Peak on New Year's Eve to set off fireworks. Here's a picture of them on the Cog Railway right of way.

I have never been to the crossing. It must be the Tokyu line, I will check this coming weekend.

When I was a kid, elder friends and I often went to the crossings of railway lines. We placed twigs, leaves and other things on the rail to see how they are crushed by the train. Sometimes the train had to stop and the driver yelled at us. Sorry, it was not me; my friends did that.

The picture below was taken about 50 years ago on the Enoshima electric rail (famous for its proximity to houses). The place is very close to where Kurosawa shot "High & Low."

(Source: Mu-san Railway Diary)

I will become a patissier, God willing.