As a loco engineer I would like to know how some of you cope with someone taking their life with your train. This has happened to me twice and of course it is something that I try but will never forget. I have tried counseling but that just helps for a while till some other idiot gets to close. Every crossing I go over now sits me straight up in my seat. HELP!
Well I’m not a locomotive engineer (yet) but I can say that I was told over and over again by locomotive engineers that I know; that they absolutly hate grade crossings. I personally, don’t blame many LE for hating grade Xings espeacilly with all the dumb people out here today that don’t understand what flashing red lights and gates indicate, or the people are just plain stupid and put themselves and others in jepordy becasue, they think it’s funny or cool. There are also other people who are impacinet (spelling) and rather try to beat the train to not be inconvenicend. Eveytime train crews approach one like you said maury, they are sitting straight up in the seat with all sences going. I was also told that in the LE profession it’s not a mater of if it’s a matter of when a train car or train pedestrian collision will occur.
My best advice I can tell you brother is to verify that the accident wasn’t your falt. ( I don’t know what some of the factors involved were) but, you tryed eveything you could to prevent the situation. It’s is ok to feel a little worried or guilty but don’t let it eat you alive, remember is was beyond your control.
well…i havent killed anyone yet (knock on wood) but also im a colder person… if someone wants to put themselfs in a sitionation where i do kill them (suiside or try to beat me at a crossing) i wont loss to much sleep over it… now what will couse me to lose sleep will be the fact that i kill someone that had no controll of the situation…such as a passanger in the car… or worse yet…kids in the car…
but that is just me
csx engineer
Nothing wrong with that csxengineer i know a few that think the same way.
I’ve spent years convincing myself that you can’t hardly work in a on-train capacity if you worry yourself to pieces about grade crossing accidents and the potential for them, to say nothing of the loss of life. It’s so cold-blooded to think that way and I really don’t like doing it but there isn’t really anything else that will work for me, anyway.
The fact of life for line of road train and engine employees is not ‘if they kill someone’, but ’ when they kill someone’. As long as you have complied with all applicable rules and procedures for the situation you have done all that is humanly possible and as long as you are human that is ALL you can do. You can have sympathy and pity for those whose lives have been lost but you cannot restore those lives and you have done all that could be done to prevent taking them. The fact that at grade road crossings still exist indicate that local governments value their tax dollar more than they do the lives of thier citizens who use the crossings, otherwise projects to eliminate the crossings would be undertaken.
Precisely.
Some of that in trucking also.
Remember, guilt is for people who have done something wrong. Have you done anything wrong? No.
Haven’t done anything wrong but that’s one time I don’t like having that front row seat.
Have not kiled anyone yet as an engineer, but I was on a train as a conductor that gad a loss of life.
Rodney
You have no control of the situation so you have to just take the Oh well attitude that it was the persons fault that ran in front of your train & if he did not he would still be around today. [:o)][:p][:)]
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Originally posted by maury
I realize there are many variables (length, loading, # of cars,etc) but just as a ballpark, how much distance does it take to stop a “typical” freight moving 30 mph?..
If somone places temselves in front of you (either by accident, or on purpose) I hardly see how you should blame yourself for the rules of physics.
Fri night at Wichita, BNSF ran over some dude who was awake and sitting on the trks! A short report can be found at www.knssradio.com and it can be found under the local news column. Have no sadness for people stupid as that.
Some Army veterans have had to cope with the same kind of problem. If you are a veteran yourself, you might find a counselor who can help thought either the Veterans Administration and one of its nearby hospitals or through one of the Veterans organizations, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, etc.
With 27 years in fire and EMS I’ve learned to live with it. That’s not to say that all the lives I’ve seen lost for any number of reasons have all been easy - some make no sense - but in all cases, my involvement is beyond the event that caused their demise, be it natural or otherwise. I can’t speak for train crewmen (the conductor may not be at the controls, but he or she is still in the cab), but from what I’ve read in this and previous thread along this line it appears that such is the case in a lot of those incidents as well.
A big part of coping for me is rationalizing. Many people have done their time in life and will be missed more for the memories than anything else. Some folks essentially had it coming and it caught up with them. As I said, the tough ones are the ones you can’t rationalize - the true victims of circumstance who go before their time.
Re: How long it takes a train to stop – I heard years ago that an “average” train traveling at “average” speed would take nearly the length of the train to stop. A train would be a mile long, roughly, if it consisted of 75 feet per car-and-gap and seventy cars (conservative today, but a long enuf train for the sixties.) Thirty miles per hour would be considered just middlin’ slow on a lot of roads forty years ago, but is usually unacceptable today out on the high lines except for loaded unit trains.
If that rule of thumb holds today and all the physics are “mutatis mutandis” as the scientists say, then an average train today, being longer, faster and frequently heavier, I would think could take as much as two miles to stop. Maybe that’s too much, but a mile for sure. Which means that the engineer will take perhaps eight minutes to jog-trot the mile unless s/he’s in terrific shape. Thus we have the ironic cruelty of the cops showing up sooner and the cry going on, “Where was the engineer when all this happened?” Where WAS he? Shuddering and maybe developing PTSD, that’s where.
Anyone out there with the good stats on this?
Allen
The train I was on was 10,900 ton and was doing 35 mph from the place we the engineer & I put the train in emergency the 90 psi reduction about 2800 feet rolled by that is over a half a mile.
Rodney
Thanks, Rodney. About how many cars did the train have?
allen
109 I think.
Rodney