[MikeK]

Today's crossings are hard rubber or neoprene moldings, or carefully cast concrete with steel guard channels paralleling the rails. They are close and level with the rails, and silky smooth to drive over without much need to slow down.

It wasn't that way back then! Rotten, rough and broken wood, rarely level with the rail tops. That required a much slower speed at some crossings to avoid bottoming out. If you were too chicken and lugging you could stall with a manual trans and get caught between rails. Then someone panics and floods the engine attempting a restart, something a modern injected engine will not do.

Of course, "Look" back then referred to down the tracks, not at your phone.