“Fatal collisions are a fact of life for an enginner, a part of the job.”
“My first one was very sad, a 23-year-old girl who dropped her father off at work and came roaring out of the parking lot without seeing me. She came right into the side of me, got dragged a ways - she was killed right in front of her father.”
“The second was a car I hit broad side at 60 miles per hour - I was on the ‘California Zephyr’, coming up past another engine doing some switching work on a siding. This guy drove around all the other cars waiting at the gate, drove around the gate, and across the tracks - I could see him, he wasn’t even looking! Bang! We dragged him half a mile, locked onto the drawbar. He was 23 too.”
“Hitting a person is amazingly noisy. As big as a locomotive is, you hear any little thing you hit - it resonates throughout the cab. There is a real loud thud when you hit a person, and you can hear them being dragged under the engine. I had one guy in Reno stand on the tracks and let me clobber him - looked me right in the eye.”
---- Engineer Jeff Garrett (Amtrak)
Just another incentive for everybody out there to be safe when around railroads.
Have fun, and enjoy yourself, but please, please be safe.
Well,at least railroad employees dont have as dangerous a job, People nowdays just have a hard time paying attention to anything. our local newspaper posts the headlines from that day 100 years ago, and its shocking when at least one new local guy got crushed almost every week working in the yard or in a track gang. I had once dreamed of training to be an engineer, but because of the stats of engineers hitting people during their career, I think I’ll stick with working museums, and enjoy the mainline action from the sidelines.
my first one was at 21 mph. didnt kill her just did alot of damage the 2nd one was at 42 mph she stood right there looking at the engine and me. never once did she move she wanted to die . poor conductor had to go and find her. both was girls 1st one 17 and the second one 18. it dont get easier no matter how many you hit. and like railpac said it seemed like 30 min went by when i lost sight of her in front of the engine til i hit her you here it you feel it you try and stop, it took 2723ft from the time i was in emergency til i stopped. the crew hurts everytime this happens . its not just the people in the cars or the one you hit or their surviors. the crew also.
I’m going to conductor school in a week and I have tried to prepare myself as much as possible,but I know that i will never be prepared for witnessing the loss of human life. I used to go to Illinois State University in Normal, IL and I worked at the 911 dispatch center. One of the police sergeants told me a gresome story about a boy who played chicken with a train. He was showing off to two girls on a crossing. As the train approached the boy’s foot got stuck. The officer on the scene said the body was so torn apart that there was nothing left. He remembers a lot birds eating at what was left. The mother of the boy demanded that the officer find something of him to bury. Finally, the officer was able to find part of the skull and spinal cord.
When I was in grade school we had a commuter rail line close to our school. Some of the kids hated waiting for the train to depart from the station so they decided to crawl on the tracks underneath the train!!! I couldn’t believe it! Let’s just say that METRA sent a spokesperson and we had a two hour assembly and on train safety. Maybe this is something that should be done whether or not incidents like these happen. But we all know that it won’t stop everyone.
Wow…That is a pretty nasty story, n_stephenson. But it does get the point across to us Railfans. Others, I think it must bounce out of their heads. Do they just not get the danger? You see it all the time on TV.
Its not just kids who try and climb under the train, I posted on another topic that at our towns local event one year had a woman, who I recently found out had a baby with her, who started to climb under the [double decker] excursion train, and luckily was caught. The train was on one out of three tracks, so a train could have come on another track once she got to the other side.
Yeah i think all schools need to have an assembly on train safety, espeacilly the drivers-ed classes. Kids think trains just stop or turn. Kids these days don’t understand the power of trains.
This is too sad to imagine as someone whom isn’t an engineer. I feel for the victims, their families and certainly the engineer. I have to ask: does the memory of just ONE fatality linger in your head for what seems like forever? How do you deal with it? I think I’d go nuts, just recalling the tragedy day after day.[:(]
Unfortunately, I belive many engineers (not all), after a coulple of fatal collisions become desensitized to the situation. I would think that you would almost have to, or else you wouldn’t be able to handle the job for very long. [2c] Any current or former RR employees, is this about right? Also, if you have any stories that emphasize the need to be very safe when around railroads, please share.
I have given this some thought and will refrain from posting on this thread. i could give a answer to how we deal with this but it would only make some mad at me other would call me a sob. ( this has been done before on here) because seasoned railroaders become cold hearted. Ill close on here just saying that we deal with it. and life goes on.
Yes, we deal with it, some better than others. In , [censored] some years ago, we had a local (mine, as agent) with one motor and 2 cars, 20 MPH. On left side of track was new and used car dealership. On right side is resaurant. Car salesmen going to lunch, first bunch crossed over safely in front of train, johnny-come-lately, running, ran in front of unit and was rolled up in a ball. Heard hit, heard it go under the pilot, under the traction motors (each one individually), under the fuel tank, under each traction motor on the rear truck, under the pilot at the rear. In front of his friends. In front of his boss. In front of his family. In front of the people in the dealership. In front of the people in the restaurant.
This was not a good day. Just one hour later, after cops, coroner, meat wagon and pukeing, had a loaded cement truck miss getting hit by the same train by inches where (and at an angle) that would have launched the cement mixer part right into 2 elementary classrooms of a school at that crossing. We had to send that unit to Sacramento for new wheels.
Yes, we deal with it. Some better than others.
[:(!][:(][|(][|(][soapbox]
You couldn’t be more wrong. You NEVER forget the faces, not ever. You find a way to live on, not to forget, just overcome. You remember the guys you work with who don’t make it in much the same way. Sorry, but I don’t share these sorts of stories anymore. It just kedges the memories back up again…
All I have to do is close my eyes, and I can see the little girls face, framed by the cars rear window, and the realization in her eyes that they were going to be hit, yet she never even blinked.
And flickering over and through that image is the look on her fathers face, when the wreckers finaly pull the Volvo wagon off the front knuckle, and he realizes his little girl is still in the back seat, but the rear doors are only inches apart, and he knows that his impaitence is the reason she is dead.
That man’s face, the utter and absolute pain, fear, anger and rage, all mixed together with finally understanding that she would still be alive if he had just waited, will allways be with me.
Every night, I go to my daughters rooms, and touch each one of them, just to make sure they are still there, still real, still mine.
I wait, just to hear them breathing, then I kiss them goodnight, and that man’s face comes back to me every single night.
No, it never goes away, and its still hard to close my eyes…
Agree 110% with Ed, LC, Kenneo & Wabash - And I generally got called-in on these things after the fact, many times getting there before the emergency crews.
Railroaders have to also deal with the loss of or injuries to their own. Found myself at the edge of restraint several times after a local no-nothing starts spouting about “evil railroads” before even examining the accident scene. There is at least one over-reacting fire marshall in southern CA that must be fortunate now that I’m in CO.
I know of many stories of people getting hit by trains before. There have been two accidents in the past few years near where I live at the same intersection. The first was two summers ago when a fertilizer truck tried to beat the train and ended up hitting the lead locomotive. This was a large truck and I was one of the first on scene having a scanner that is always on, there was nothing left of the truck. The cab was compressed into about 1 1/2 feet and there were pieces of the truck everywhere. The guy died later that night. There was a 8 inch hole in the road from when he hit the train and the truck went straight down. I knew the enginner on the train and before that, in his 25 plus years, he never was in a grade crossing accident before. The most recent was a FedEx truck trying to beat the train ended up getting clipped by the locomotive and flipped over. The guy lived with little or no injuries. Both times, the train was doing about 35mph.
Plus, I had set up a meeting with the local power plant for a school project to discuss a problem with thier shipments of coal. The local crew used to deliver the 10-20 cars when all the students were coming to school. I saw about 20 of them daily walk between and crawl underneath the cars. I told the power plant and since then, they have brought in the cars when school is in session. I would think the kids would have enough sense not to do something so stupid, cause hey, its high school were talking about. I do think schools should have an assembly regaurdless of elementery, middle or high school, we have the problem everywhere.
On June 17,2003 we had a triple fatality at my work. It happened at 4:45 p.m. Our shop is located beside NS on the Cincy to Danville KY line (CNO&TP)in Boone Co KY. I did not actually see it happen but heard it. We have a train go by at least every 10-20 minutes on busy days. So the sound you hear from a train going by normally and one hitting a car is quite different.
My co-worker and I were cleaning up to go home when he heard a loud thump. I can still hear that sound in my head. He looked at me and said, “Brian, that don’t sound good.” When I looked out our window, I saw the father going hysterical. I knew then what had happened. I ran outside the door and a man that saw it happen yelled at me to call 911 that a car had been hit by the train. I called 911 and went to the father when he told me that his kids were in the car. 911 wanted me to get their ages but he was so in shock he couldn’t tell me. 911 then told me we had to find the car. As me and the man that came running to me started going down the tracks, the mother was lying on the ground dead. The car was dragged around 900 feet before it hit the switchstand and knocked it loose. When we finally found the car we heard a baby (boy), age 3, crying. The other gentleman went down the bank and pulled him out. He was about ready to fall out of his carseat. Then I grabbed the baby from the bank and held on to him until the police and rescue got there. Felt like eternity. The other two children, (girls) ages 4 & 6 died in the car. They were partially ejected. You knew. After the policeman took the little boy from me I turned to look around and saw the conductor, the girls, the car. All the paramedics and policemen. I can tell you what they said when they called for aircare. You do not forget those things. EVER.
Now these people did not try to run the lights . Their car stalled on the track. What goes through your mind is beyond me when you are in a position like that. No one knows or would ever know. You could speculate but you
Hazelwood School District here in St. Louis has a semi-heavy density line running within 100 yards of Hazelwood East High School. Hazelwood East, In Cooperation with BNSF, and St. Louis Police has set up secerity cameras around the crossing. Any student that is caught going around or uner the crossing gates, will be suspended from school for 10 days, a 2nd offense, 30 days, 3rd offence, they will be expelled from school and if they drive, they will loose their liscence for up to 3 years. Any student caught climbing railroad eqipment if the train is stopped will be arrested by Local Police the next day at school, and recive 180 day suspension with 95 percent probiblity of being expelled. Any student that is caught being hit by a train has an option, 1 way trip to the moruge (?) or immeditly expelled for their stupidity, or they can become a representative of Operation Life saver and serve a 1 year term doing community service for OLS.
This subject seems rather morbid to most yet, may be necessary. I’m sure all of us that are exposed to railroading are abohored by these stoires of carelessness, ignorance, and or stupidity. In this forum, it’s would appear to me that we are preaching to the chior though. I agree that our characters are many and varied and each mentally handles these events somewhat differently. Most of us have those “flashbulb” memories of any major disasters i.e. when JFK was killed, 911, etc. We will carry those pictures and feelings in our minds always. As for me, I can handle the gore much better than I could handle those images that can never fade, of the faces and last moments of someone’s life. The more intimate knowledge of the character and details of a victims life that we learn about after an incident. These, I think, are the haunting details for us personally. I urge anyone involved in these accidents to take some positive action. Do counseling or such if neccesary. Please talk with your brothers and sisters at union meetings and analyze what may be done to improve safety at each location. I know one of several that stick in my mind happened when I was a newly promoted engineer working as a fireman on the Wash. to NYC runs. When returning to Wash. The engineer was letting me run and while going about 100 mph around a curve that leads accross a river bridge, we spotted what appeared at first to be trash or laundry next to the rail ahead. We both had our heads and noses pressed to the windshield (E-60) to see what it was. At the very last second, what we saw were two small children (3-4 yrs old), one next to rail and the other with his head on the rail. Because of the curve we could not see if they moved in time. We reported it and I can never forget that long 43 minutes thant went by before we were called and notified that the children were ok. The next day, after some discussion with other RR officials and union brothers, I went to the trailer park next to the site and spoke with one of t