I have seen the first part of the video but not the whole video. The way it has been descibed I am glad that I did not see the whole thing. Anyone who purposefully challenges a train is a screwball. Anyone who doesn’t know that the train is coming I feel sorry for but unfortunately it is usually the other way around.
Stay safe near trains everybody!
Willy
I’ll never forget the first time I saw that video, during an Operation Lifesaver presentation made to employees. As soon as it started, I recognized the location… Fairview Avenue, Downers Grove (I’ve biked past there many times…just yesterday I was there). Having a familiar location like that show up, and suspecting what I was going to see happen, made me really not want to look at the rest of the video, but, of course we saw it, then ran it through again (the first time we hadn’t known who the victim would be). Even though the video ended when the corpse hit the cameraman, you could tell she probably never knew what hit her…the white of her dress was turning to red, even in those two seconds or less. The cameraman himself was drenched in her blood, we were told. I, too, had heard the divorce story.
I hope these gory details help drive home the original message.
As for the timing, I’m not sure, but I’d put it later than the late 60s…BN used those E units on suburban trains well into the 80s (someone correct me or supply a good date for that), and video photography didn’t become common until well after the 60s (you could tell by the end of the film that it was video, not a movie).
Now, having said all of that, it should be noted that they probably didn’t go past a lowered gate, since they may have gotten off the stopped train, and the platform is inside the gates. Still, no excuse for crossing the tracks without looking or listening (or at least recognizing what you’re hearing).
Kids screw around the railroad in my area all the time. Although trains pass that area only 9-10 times a day and go only 30 MPH it is still dangerous. There are “No Tresspassing” sighns everywhere, but most people ignore it as if it was a joke. By the way, i’m 16 and i have never done anything around the railroad that would endanger my life. (okay, maybe once, but we probably all have)
[:(]Hi guys & gals [:(]
It seems that as much as we all love trains, there still is a real sobering fact…THEY CAN KILL YA! I rember that METRA video too well also[V]. It seems someone (I’m not sure on the age) got picked off here in St. Francis last week. [xx(]LESS THEN 500 FT. FROM WHERE I USED TO TRESSPASS ON CNW/UP TRACKAGE[xx(] I told the story before how hard they tryed to tell us not to play around those tracks. I listened… sadly not everyone does[V]
I’m a schoolbus driver and one area on my route I’ve got to pick up kids at a road that crosses the BNSF tracks here in town. The tracks come around a curve and the crossing is there. I told all of my kids to stay away from the tracks and to be at the corner and not by the tracks. I don’t know how many times I’ve stop there to pick up the kids and a train has come along.
The sub division is growing and this year I was at school registration to register the kids that need to ride the bus. I tell them to stay away from the tracks and tell the parents about the danger of being near the tracks. This year I got some Operation Life Saver handouts and passed them out to the kids and parents. Parents from other buses that don’t go near the tracks asked for some of the pamplets.
I waited before i put my 2cents in. i can tell you that i have hit and killed a person. and after you hit them it is not done, the hours of paper work and questioning. is just part of it. 3-5 hrs is not uncommon. is it fun or exciting. not at all. just remeber when your about to kill yourself, think about the several hours afterwards that the crew spends doing paper work and getting you body scoped up. then the ( for me 4 months ) of of getting it out of my mind where you can function some what. the life they take is not just thiers .
This story happened to me back in '98 or '99 I belive. A couple of weeks earlyer I saw “Danger on the rails” docomentry. I was on my way to work and had to cross a single set of tracks. The tracks paralle Barnet highway, and river road connected to it like a “T” It’s got traffic lights and only one vehicle can be at the line, then the tracks behind you, the the rest of the cars behind that.
So this doughhead decides to stop right behind me. I was the first car at the light. I noticed he had a big “NO FEAR” sticker across the top of his windshield.
I thought nothing of it, and turned to my right to look at the guy next to me in the lane next to me. This was at ten at night, and the roads were a lil frosty in mid fall. All was quiet as we waited for our light to turn green so we could turn left.
So I looked left down the dark tracks, fiddled with my radio then looked to my right again at the car beside me. Then it happened! everything turned white!looked back to my left to see the triangle of lights comming at the poor sucker stopped behind me. I pulled ahead as much as possible hopeing the guy behind me had a nought room. I looked back at him and he was motioning me to pull ahead more. If I did that I’d get hit by traffic on my left.
Then the bells started to ring, Guy behind me starts to panic as he touches his nose of his car to mine.
Light turns green for us as the train starts blaring his horn. I litterly stood on the gas only to have my front tires spin on the frosty pavement. but I do inch forward.
I back off and give my Honda civic type R just a little gas and we start going.
Dunderhead behind me had four seconds to spare. The train was a CN, witch means they haul butt were ever they go. Not like CP, were they poke along.
Nobody got hit that night, and as I drove to work I saw the guy behind me and I had to say to my self “Yeah man, NO FEAR, JUST TOTAL TERROR.”
[quote]
[i]Originally posted by edblysard
How could they not know a train was coming?[quote
Ed, I too saw that video - and just about bet the thinking was that the gates were down for the engine sitting to the left. Never even considered there might be one coming. Preoccupation - kind of like cell phones and automobiles!
Jen
Starting Sept. 1st, it will be illegal to drive a automobile and talk on a hand held cell phone in Texas. You may use a hands free set up, ie speaker or ear piece and microphone, but may not drive holding the phone to the side of your head. Bet you right, they thought the gates were for the stopped engine on the left. Still, the sound? You can hear it comming on the tape. But yeah, heard animals just following the rest, not thinkgs about where they were, and what they were doing. Deadly for the young lady, and I can bet the crew had a rough time of it also.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by Mookie
I couldn’t agree with you more! I’m about your age and think it’s totally ridiculous what many people our age will do. Speaking of the lack of respect many young people have for railroads, how about this? Sometime in the 90’s a teenage boy in England set up some cement blocks on a railway track one night with the intent to derail a train so he could impress some girls that were with him. A passenger train derailed and several people were killed and he was sent to prison. I’m sure the girls were very impressed.
I myself have seen the video everyone’s talking about on the FOX program with the final frame paused before the woman actually gets hit. I’m glad I didn’t see the rest. If seeing that doesn’t make people want to stop, look and listen, I don’t know what will.
I mentioned these two incidents on another thread, but they’r
Hi All,
I live in Michigan right on the Holly sub of Grand Trunk Western (CN). I’ve lived there all my 38 years and basically grew up walking the tracks behind my house. We are way out in the country, and growing up, there were never any No Trespassing signs or Railroad police around. Nobody ever told us that it was dangerous. We thought and acted like the railroad was a regular road. Look both ways, if something is coming get the heck out of the way, fast. We never had an incident, and only once do I recall that the crew had to give an extra toot to warn someone…and that was an adult. Today, I would never dream of doing the things that I did in my uneducated youth. And my railfanning freinds and myself let everyone know, in no uncertain terms, stay off the right of way. The kids usually listen. It’s the adults that have a hard time getting it. We are rather fortunate in that we have a great railfaning spot at the Durand, MI Union Station. It is open to the public and you can stand on the platform as the trains go by. There ia a fence seperating you from the right of way, but you can stand within about 8 feet of millions of tons of CN freight trains roaring by at over 60 MPH. More than once I have used this as an object lesson with friends to get the point across that these big, heavy, thundering machines cannot stop for you so you have to stop for them. So far I have only had one person stay at the fence with me for the entire length of the train. Everyone else has backed off . If that experience doesn’t make the point then they are hopeless.
I’m also familiar with the BN racetrack and some of the stations/ crossings. The racetrack is one of the busiest lines in America. From LaGrange Road west thru Downer’s Grove, Naperville to Aurora, The video is a great one to demonstrate EXPECT A TRAIN FROM ANY DIRECTION AT ANY TIME! Many of the gates are the single quadrant type to cover one side of the road & a short arm for the pedestrians on t
[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard
Starting Sept. 1st, it will be illegal to drive a automobile and talk on a hand held cell phone in Texas. You may use a hands free set up, ie speaker or ear piece and microphone,
Stay Frosty,
Ed
Hi all
Here in our area about 6 months ago we had a cell phone talker / train crash. A lady was driving one car while her daughter followed her in another car. The mother was talking on a cell phone. She drove through the down crossing gate and into the train. The train did not hit her, SHE HIT THE TRAIN. Whoever she was speaking with heard her last words. She never spoke any others. Imagine the shock her poor daughter felt seeing the death of her mother and not being able to do anything to stop it.
Do we really need to speak to someone that bad? I sure don’t.
Stay safe, and Look, Listen, and Live
Don’t forget the troops
Ed for president
I think it was an editor in car and driver that said"shut up and drive!".
stop look listen and live
enough said[;)]
stay safe
joe
I live not too far from the CSX tracks (E/W) and CSXT (N/S) tracks. I’ve seen people up on the Big Four viaduct at the south end of my city and I’ve called the police to get them off there. Last week, I heard over the scanner that the police had stopped an adult and several girls who had been walking across the bridge. They told the officer that “We didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be there.” Oh Puh-lease!!! You have at least an eighth-grade education, since the drivers license exams are geared to that level. So, you couldn’t figure out what those signs on either side of the track on both ends of the bridge were actually saying. I’m sure you saw them, they said “No Trespassing. CSX Railroad”. It’s not like they were nailed forty feet above the tracks, you knew it was wrong.
While the view from the bridge is probably spectacular, it’s also dangerous. For a train coming from the east, the view is blocked until the train comes around a bend. If someone is on this bridge and is caught by a train coming from the east, they’ll need to be running about 50 mph to outrun the train. Otherwise, the only other way is down to the street below, a drop of some 100 feet.
I sit up on a bridge that’s closed to vehicular traffic, but allows pedestrian and bicycle traffic to go across it. I can watch the trains coming from either east or west and the crews know that I’m out of their way and they can concentrate on the business of running their trains.
[
[/quote]
Hi all
Here in our area about 6 months ago we had a cell phone talker / train crash. A lady was driving one car while her daughter followed her in another car. The mother was talking on a cell phone. She drove through the down crossing gate and into the train. The train did not hit her, SHE HIT THE TRAIN. Whoever she was speaking with heard her last words. She never spoke any others. Imagine the shock her poor daughter felt seeing the death of her mother and not being able to do anything to stop it.
Do we really need to speak to someone that bad? I sure don’t.
Stay safe, and Look, Listen, and Live
Don’t forget the troops
Ed for president
[/quote]
I will vote for all of the above!
Jen
On the CNW Metra there is a rule for suburban territory that states that “No more than one train can occupy the limits of a station at one time; any train approaching an occupied station must first stop vefore reaching the station, and then may proceed not exceding restricted speed through the limits of the station”. The only time this rule does not apply is when the tracks at the station are physically separated by a fence. This rule pertains to freight trains also.
More rules to protect the stupid, so they can breed even more stupidity.
You know back say in the 1940s a rule like that would not have been necessary. I wonder if people had more common sense back then? We as a people seem to have grown more stupid as time has passed. I don’t have the answers but I do have the questions.
[:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!] In my town people use the tracks as a dumping ground for their lawn clippings, home improvment trash, and anything else that is trash!!![:(!]
You mean they put that stuff right on tracks?! How many derailments have you guys had? Even if people put trash beside the railroad it is still not right (and illegal)
plus a fine for littering, but that’s the least of the problems.
That’s sad.[:(!]