I heard that on Wed. June 13 in Chesterton,IN at 6:20 am a UP engine hit a 20 inch piece of rail causing it to hop the tracks. The police think it was some kids who lifted the rail on the tracks. Chesterton Police and the railroads have always had probelms with these stupid skateboarder kids being board and messing around and on the railroad. I hope this does’et make NS want to post no tresspassing signs and that other stuff like Conrail did. Anybody else know about this?
My thread entitled “Railway (Snicker)” reproduces a local article on the incident. I don’t recall that the train derailed, but that length of rail was enough to make a mess of things.
I agree wholeheartedly with your hopes that this doesn’t make railfanning the area more difficult than it already is. Unfortunately, it was railfans that caused the first crackdown at Porter. When it was still Conrail, and still open to fans, you couldn’t beat it. Porter probably drew bigger crowds than Rochelle usually does.
I haven’t heard of it I travel on that line almost every day I did hear about some kids putting several lawn mowers and bikes on the rail though, as far as railfanning goes there were 10 people out on clark street crossing near burns harbor on friday so I don;t thin it has affected it yet