I can believe that train suction is a myth, but I have experienced NASCAR suction. I used to work as a track worker for the SoCal region of the Sports Car Club of America, the California Sports Car Club. We routinely provided Flag and Communications workers for NASCAR when they raced at Riverside Raceway (of blessed memory).
I often got the job of manning, alone, the Black Board flag position. This was on the back straight just after the vehicle bridge. NASCAR used a track configuration that gave them a very long straight runup to the bridge. They reached well over 150 MPH as they blasted by into the Turn 9 sweeping hairpin.
My job was to be a repeater of the Black Flag information displayed at the Start/Finish line. I had a metal number board, magnetic numbers, one Black flag, and one “Meatball” flag. The “Meatball” was displayed if the black flag was for a mechanical reason; the plain black flag if the driver had been a bad boy.
So I listened for the command to fly the appropriate black flag, put the car number on the board, and showed the driver both as he screamed by at absolute top speed. I normally watched approaching cars standing back from the track so that only my head was visible to the driver. When I spotted the car I was to flag, I moved out to within 4 or 5 feet from the edge of the track and showed him the flag. The cars were usually right at my edge of the track to set up for Turn 9. The bow wave wasn’t so bad but the suction behind the car was scary. I generally braced myself against being sucked toward the track and retreated as soon as possible. With cars running nose to tail at those speeds you really had to be careful.
I did this kind of thing for 30 years and it was hard work for no pay under sometimes harsh conditions, but it was the best seat in the house.
When hooping up orders to a train, one must stand pretty close to the track - the poles aren’t all that long. I never worried about suction, and after the engineer (or fireman) snatched the orders, you could hear the train pick up speed and the caboose was really travelling when it went by. Very hard to keep the hoop steady so the orders can be snatched. The conductor is supposed to have the orders but if it just an info type order, I would never give a ‘wash-out’ signal which would mean the train would have to back up.
There was a hill at one tower and a train could really pick up speed coming off that hill toward the tower. The senior men cautioned me to hold back the signal so the hogger would have to slow way down, then give him the signal, race down the steps, and hold up the hoop. Engine noise would drown out the epithets; never could hear what I was called.
It appeared to me that people didn’t exactly get sucked under, but fell down and fall under because of the overbracing thing already addressed. Stay back behind the yellow line or further, I guess. That’s what its there for.
thanks for the info… i will keep a look out for it when it is shown in australia… when i lived in england as a young boy ( 10 yo )we would head down to the local station and watch the london to edinburg trains go thru the station … the trains were powered by deltic locomotives running at 100mph… these locos had twin engines 36 cylinders 72 opposed pistons…no mufflers when they went thru the station a bell would ring and a warning would be given to move back… i remember bracinig myself against the sudden force and feeling the train suck me in the direction the train was going… i can also remember 40 years later the feel of a boot hitting my backside when a railway employee told me to move back , some thing you never forget… peter