ST. LOUIS - Early Tuesday morning, a line of trucks waiting for road salt were blocked by a train.

There’s no other way in and out to get crucial salt supplies from Gunther Salt Company in St. Louis. John Dames, with Cannon Excavation, said he waited for about 90 minutes.

“That was here when I got here,” he said, pointing to the train. “I’m trying to get salt. Everybody needs salt. Hospitals need salt.”

The salt at this location is used by everyone, from schools to shopping centers to city halls.

Jacob Hoffmann with Hoelscher Trucking added, “It makes it really hard for us just to get anything done—especially waiting on the trains.”

Not only were people outside lined up blocked from getting in, but people inside getting loads were blocked from getting out.

The train started moving the blockade after about two hours.

Once the train cleared, salt loaders moved quickly in a dance between scooping and dumping.

But they’ll never get back that time they could’ve been making roads and sidewalks safer. Gunther Salt Company says it would like to prevent it from happening again.

Ice, in this case, had frozen up a train track switching system.

Peter Gunther told us, “This will be an ongoing problem because Terminal Railroad is impacted by the weather just like every other business is in the winter. So, this is what happens when we have a major snowfall, but this would not happen if we had the appropriate infrastructure.”

He says St. Louis needs to build an overpass so that people aren’t cut off from many of the businesses on the other side of the tracks. The Terminal Railroad Association agrees. Chief of Infrastructure Management Eric Fields wrote to FOX 2:

“TRRA recognizes the inconvenience of blocked crossings and tries to avoid them to the extent possible to limit the impacts to local industries and traffic. The historic winter storm this week has slowed service as we dig out our infrastructure in order to safely work and service our customers.

The St. Louis Riverfront is seeing increased growth in exports, particularly agricultural, on both sides of the Mississippi River and railroads are an integral part in supporting this growth.

TRRA consistently works with our customers and federal, state, and local leadership for infrastructure solutions in the form of grade separations to deconflict crossings as much as possible so our region can grow and create jobs. TRRA believes the St. Louis riverfront has viable solutions that we look forward to implementing.”

A plan is reportedly headed soon to city leaders in the hopes of making sure the people trying to improve the roads are getting access to the tools to help residents.