Thursday near Hampden, Maine a Dump Truck was unable to stop for a train already blocking a crossing.
Apparently, the Truck was unable to stop for the blocked crossing and swerved to the other side of the road, trying to avoid hitting a vehicle stopped for the train. The Dump Truck then hit the side of the train. The trucker was pinned in his cab and had to be cut out of that truck.
Here is a video link form a local TV News Broadcast showing the truck and MM&A Diesel.
The truck must have been going at an extremely high rate of speed to have derailed the locomotive and split the train plus cave in the truck cab and push its engine into the cab as it did. MMA but can’t be the railroad’s fault this time.
Thanks for the accurate info on this. The news report I saw concentrated on the fact that the truck driver was trapped and conscious, and finally extricated. The MM&A locomotive was visible in the footage, and they said something about “brake failure.”
Can you blame me for what I thought about? [}:)] (Even though not seriously)
If you went all the way to the bottom of the comments there was a sub-headline that said the truck had lost its brakes. It’s a safe bet that stopping that load was going to be an adventure even without a train in the way.
Never wondered, it is pretty plain: the loss of brakes come because of either 1) the driver isn’t paying attention to his driving; 2) the driver is driving too fast for his load; or 3) both.
Norris, you may have something there! All objects have a gravitational attraction of their own, which would bring heavy objects within close range toward one another. Nobody can argue with the mass of a train being attractive.
Of course, less massive objects (the cars and light trucks) are also drawn toward the train, but, since everything is in motion, they will tend to orbit the large mass. This phenomenon is best known (and often taken advantage of) by railfans.
Yes, but…I know this is just speculation and that the actual facts will probably come out in the investigation. Some say it is wrong to speculate. But in the meantime, a mighty burden has been placed on the dump truck driver by the unproven accusation that negligence on his part may be the sole cause of this truck/ train collision. And while that too is just speculation, it matters because the burden that it places on the dump truck driver is real.
If it turns out that the dump truck driver is blameless, it will have been a great injustice to have accused him in a reckless and self-serving rush to judgment without any proof. I hope that anyone who believes that speculation is wrong will look at that speculation. So I would like to offer a few thoughts as to reasons why the guilt of the dump truck driver may not be a forgone conclusion as some contend.
The last time that the dump truck crossed the tracks in question, there was no train on the tracks. Could it be just a coincidence, that there was a train on the tracks this time, or, is there some bigger conspiracy afoot?
The last time the dump truck driver stopped the dump truck, the brakes worked well enough to cause the dump truck to stop. I think the mainstream media is discounting this last obvious fact.
Could the dump truck with no brakes have stopped in time, if there was more time- say, if the flashing lights came on earlier- like 20- 45 minutes before the train came along? It’s entirely possible that the mishap would not have occured at all, if there were some pre-crossing light warning lights, and perhaps some pre-pre-crossing light warning lights. Had there been enough warning lights erected, it’s possible tha
Sorry 'bout that. As near as I can tell, the forum software is in charge of picking the font size. If I don’t go back and change it, it can sometimes weird out.
On the serious side I hope the driver is ok after being airlifted out. When the bed of a truck shifts like it did in the photos it shows the violence of the collision. Especially with the deformation of the trucks cab. On the lighter side of everyones comments about the gravity of railroad crossings there is no gravitational force here, it just ducks. This was looking at the pics a dirty job. Rgds and Thx IGN
Oh please! Everyone knows that every running locomotive emits magnetic field which does two things: it sucks in large metal objects like trucks, and it paralyzes the brains of hapless motorists, turning them into zombies unable to operate the brake pedal. The only cure is to wear a tinfoil hat whenever driving.