| Driver in jail after train rams stuck pickup truck |
|---|
| A Sumter County, Fla., man has been charged with obstructing a railway after his GMC pickup truck was smashed by a train near Treiman Boulevard Wednesday afternoon (Dec. 27), according to Hernando Today. Charles McElrath, 32, of Wildwood, told deputies that he was hunting in the area and drove over the tracks after he got lost. Deputies later noted the spot McElrath traversed the CSX Corp. tracks was not a designated railroad crossing. The truck wouldn’t budge after its front tires wedged into the tracks and, after five minutes, McElrath and the truck’s passenger heard a train coming. The train’s engineer told deputies he tried to stop, but the train ran over the truck and dragged it at least 300 feet. No one was injured and the train was operable, but a deputy said the truck was demolished. Bond has been set at $1,000 for McElrath, who remains in the Hernando County Jail. (This item appeared Dec. 29, 2006, in Hernando Today.) |
Hopefully this poor guy’s family tree chart isn’t a straight line!
Another possiblilty as I’m in Florida.
There are many stretches of CSX track in rural areas that are quite rusty with enough weeds between the ties to the point where some people may get the impression that the line is abondoned.
Still, it’s never worth taking that kind of a chance.
I thought the thread title referred to CN’s Hunter Harrison. That would be interesting.
It seems to me that I had seen another story like this one in the forums, but I can not remember when and where it happened. I’m just glad this guy and his buddy were not injured.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
[:(!] Damned hillbillies!
[#ditto]
Gotta love things like that…misunderstandings, not idiot hunters…
…CanadianPacific 2816: Are you thinking of the instance {roughly a year ago}, a pickup and driver down at Saluda, N C…on the Saluda grade and came to a washout and the ties dropped out from under the truck leaving it sitting frame on the rails and a massive washout under the tracks…Don’t know how they every got it out.
we have a lot of farmers crossings here in nw ohio too.couple years ago guy was charged with tresspassing and poaching.
stay safe
joe
Yeah, idiotic, slob hunters. I think we have a lot of them in this country.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
Good thing I’m not an idiotic slob hunter–there would be a lot of idiotic slobs in trouble. Once you know how to cook 'em… _______________________________________________________________________ Seriously, I wish there was a way to get the message across that hunters and other trespassers won’t be tolerated on railroad rights-of-way–before their vehicles give our crews nightmares.
Just a question… Why refer to hunters as “idiotic slobs”?? I hate generalizations like that. I have known lots of hunters in my life time, and none of them could be classified as “idiotic slobs”. You know, some people cry and moan on this forum about being called a “foamer”, but don’t hesitate to label others. I just don’t get it sometimes.
Perhaps I went a little too far in characterising all hunters as “idiotic slobs”. I didn’t mean to do that. A couple of my best friends like to hunt, and they would never even think of trespassing on someone else’s property to hunt ducks, pheasants, deer or whatever, let alone trespass on a railroad right-of-way. But there is a very small percentage of hunters to which this term could be applied to, and they give other hunters out there a bad name.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
I have always said that fishermen are smarter than hunters.
[:)]
Dave
I suspect he has a family circle, similar to the inbred family circles of Kentucky and West Virginia.
If you don’t have a vehicle that is capable of handling the terrain (in this case, RR tracks), then it is rather moot as to whether the line is abandoned or not. In this case, his vehicle was not capable, and the line was not abandoned.
For some reason, I don’t feel sorry for him.
I`ll bet the look on his face was priceless when he first heard the faraway whistle. :-
I can only imagine… What a Kodak moment that would have been… It would have been a cross between “Oh [censored]” and that look people get right beforet they get sick…
Not necessarily. A case I was involved with some years back involved seven fishermen. They were each ticketed for fishing before dawn in a protected trout stream. Fishing is restricted to between dawn and dusk. It seems that they saw another fisherman casting into the stram in the pre dawn darkness so they joined in. Seems that the lone fisherman had heard of the others frequent fishing in the same spot before dawn on several occaions. You see, he was the game warden. Once the others began fishing, he and four other wardens arrested them and issued appearance tickets. The fishermen all claimed they were entrapped by the warden. They all lost. Their defense was legally insufficient as they would have fished there no matter who the other fisherman was. By claiming entrapment they admitted all the elements of their crime. Not too smart…[:-^]
LC
Yes, I am a fisherman, been known to hunt some too…
Oh Carl. So clever.
A couple of years ago I discovered some hubbub near one of the railroad crossings where I work (industrial trackage, serviced by CSX). I’m thinking somebody got hit by a locomotive, which would be odd because 10 mph is pretty fast on that track. Then I heard the engineer on the radio saying something to the effect of “I’ve never seen anything like it before…”.
A young man in a Ford Ranger 4WD pickup was tired of waiting for the blocked crossing to clear, so he decided to go around it, through a field and over the tracks. Found out his truck didn’t have the ground clearance he thought it did - he was stuck on the tracks. I didn’t stick around to see how it turned out…