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Trains News Wire FLASH: Charges filed in ‘Midnight Rider’ death
Mike Price,
Keep the head- and ditch lights on bright, whistle, okay the horn, sound it long and loud, the bell, kuh-ding, ku-ding, ku-ding the bell. and, I am positive, 6 grade crossing fatalities and fewer injuries there, and chopped up trespassers, Mike, you will sleep well knowing you did everything that you could control to prevent the mayhem.
LG from PA.
Your last sentence totals the possibilities for an engineer. Some fewer, some a great quantity more.
Across west Texas or the SF Peninsula commute area. An engr we knew as “The Bullet” got 6 suicides in 5 years.
Is that enough to verify your conclusion?
Bet the age of those involved was under 30.
I agree with Mike Price. This (and any tragedy) is sad for EVERYONE involved and I will try to remember to pray for ALL of them.
Before I became interested in the railroading industry, I never thought much about the crew in the cab of a locomotive. When seeing a train and car/pedestrian collision on the news or YouTube, the only thoughts I had were for the people in the car or the person on the tracks; the locomotive was a faceless piece of steel.
Having read personal accounts from engineers or from speaking with them, I realized that for some, a collision was a VERY major event; especially when the collision involved a mother and her children. The more I thought about it, it seemed like it would be worse than a car/car collision, as there is very little that can be done to avoid a collision, tonnage always wins, and the crew in the cab are pretty much helpless to change the outcome. (Must be a terrible feeling)
Yes, I spoke to some that implied the idiots had it coming and what did they think was going to happen? But none who displayed that attitude had stated that people had died in the collision. From what I gathered, there are those engineers who were involved in a collision and those who will be; it seems to be an occupational hazard.
This whole deal is so sad. Sending those charged to jail won’t bring the young lady back. As a class one employee I am thankful that the engineer and conductor aren’t mentioned in the criminal case. Continue to pray for her family and all involved.
“The CSX tracks cross private land owned by forest products company Rayonier, which owns a nearby paper mill.”
I suspect the preceding statement is misleading. Almost certainly Rayonier owns the property on one side, perhaps both, of the railroad. The CSX main line right of way will be under very different title, probably that of the railroad.
I will echo the sentiments expressed here. I’ve recently retired from a 37 year career in railroading, having worked in M of W, also as a brakeman and spent the last 35 years as a locomotive fireman and engineer.
I feel very fortunate that I was never involved in a crossing fatality nor even one involving serious injury. Very fortunate indeed. Most of the automobile collisions that I had were abandoned on a crossing which had been taken out of service for track work.
I remember one very conscientious engineer trainee was running the train at the time of a pedestrian fatality which was determined to be a suicide. He took some time off then came back to finish his training. After he became certified, within a year, he was involved in a crossing fatality. After that, he resigned. Yes, such events can have an effect on a person’s mental state, even though he was doing everything right.
Hopefully, CSX will be held as harmless in this case. The film crew is TOTALLY responsible for this tragic accident. The trouble is, the engineer, through no fault of his own, will have to live with this for the rest of his life.
While I’ve only had one suicide, the old heads I trained with had close to 100 kills! Many had 16, 15, 14, 10, and on and on. One poor crew got 3 in one night between Monon and Indy on 25 & 10 mph track. You develope callouses on your heart over time in order to deal with it. Some of my fellow Engineers never worked again from the horror of taking out a mini-van of little girls who were their neighbors, or watching the truck driver drown in your diesel fuel in the ditch as you both hung helplessly upside down trapped in your cabs. This is what we deal with every minute…is he gonna try and beat me here? Next crossing…she’s on the cell phone with 5 children, can’t she hear my horn?!
Thanks for all the kind words by some of the other posters. Engineer friend of mine now retired hit and killed a mom and 4 of her kids back in the early 80’s. The day he told me about it it had been 25 yrs since the accident which was actually a suicide still made him cry. The railroaders are NEVER considered when talking about those poor folks involved by a car train collision
I had an experience back in the 1960’s as a fireman on a 36 class steam locomotive on the New South Wales Government Railways in Australia, we hit and killed a ganger, because it was on my side of the loco, I was charged with involuntary manslaughter, a technical ‘get out’ for the railway department.
My commiserations to all affected.
Ted (Teditor) Freeman
Story still reads odd because it happen on a single track main that passed over a two track main. Idiots thought no trains on the single track and put down plywood and other "stuff for the move shot and expected to use trains passing by on the lower two tracks as a background.
We just had a grandfather and grandaughter killed here, fishing from a bridge. What is wrong with these people? Do they think the track is just there left over from something? Do they think they can hear the train coming from in front of it? Evidently they thought they could stand to the side and not get hurt. No walkway on the bridge BTW. Operation Lifesaver does a good job of informing people about keeping of the the track but nobody tells them, if you’ve been incredibly stupid and all else fails, fall down. Grandson did, and lived.
Mental illness is a crippling disease. Not properly treated and medicated it can lead to death. Sometimes the suicides related with the disorder can lead otherwise healthy people into its’ throes to downwardly spiraling depression. Seek professional help if you even suspect you are effected by such acts.
“Always expect a train.” They were certainly criminally negligent when they placed objects on the railroad tracks without permission.
There is no sure cure for cocky and/or stupid. Sorry, but there just isn’t.
There is no sure cure for cocky and/or stupid. Sorry, but there just isn’t.
Some things need to be clarified about this tragic accident. The news media seem to have overlooked these:
If the filmmakers really had permission from the railroad, then where were the railroad personnel overseeing the shoot to make sure everything was done safely? Yellow helmeted railroaders should have been everywhere?
I can’t imagine a railroad allowing a film crew to be out on a bridge. That’s an inherently unsafe proposition without some sort of protective procedures and/or devices to protect the crew. For one thing, they are not trained for walking around track structures, nor used to doing so. Only one side of the bridge has a walkway. On the other side it’s a straight thirty or forty or more foot drop down to the river (depending on the water level). This is probably the main reason the railroad refused permission.
Some news articles I read on the internet implied this was not a busy line, with only ten trains a day. That is patently false. Four Amtrak trains and two Autotrains a day use this line, and I can assure you the freights vastly outnumber the passenger trains. I would expect at least twenty trains a day. No railroad can afford to tie up such a busy rail line for several hours for a film shoot. This is why they usually use less important lines for filming.
The film crew was told they would have sixty seconds to exit the bridge if a train showed up. This is ridiculous, and verifies that they did NOT have permission from the railroad. Do you think the railroad would rely on the surefootedness of film crew members carrying bulky equipment and props to get out of the way within sixty seconds of a train going by at 55 or 60 mph? If they truly had permission from the railroad to be on the bridge, they would have been able to produce the document saying so, there would have been railroad personnel on site overseeing everything, and NO trains would have been running by until it had been verified by inspection that everybody and everything
Somebody did not understand the difference of “on” and “near”. The later does not allow you ON the tracks!