LAKELAND, Fla. – This week two bodies were found on separate days as a CSX coal train was being unloaded at the McIntosh Power Plant in Lakeland. The train originated on CSX in Terre Haute, Ind.
When the coal spilled out from the bottom of the coal hoppers at the plant, the bodies came out as well. Authorities said that property found on the bodies suggested the deceased were transients from out of state.
Autopsy results show the two deaths were accidental.
So here’s my question: Clearly these were some guys that went for a ride in a coal car. How do you die in a coal car? I mean unless you fall out or something like that. I’ve seen overhead views of a coal car, and usually there is some some room at the ends next to the lip. The load of coal, the way it naturally falls in, looks very well distributed and it seems that unless there would be a derailment coal doesn’t shift in cars… so people wouldn’t get buried by it. Or am I wrong here? Or unless the guys hollowed out a little “coal cave” in the car for themselves and then it caved in… just seems really odd that someone would die in a coal car like that… it was my understanding that most of the deaths surrounding unauthorized riders happened in places where loads could shift and they got pinched, or if they fell off, or were hanging over the side and got clipped by something, etc…
Either way the moral of the story here is don’t ride freight trains! A good lesson.
Other stories indicate the victoms were a man and a woman and were from opposite coasts (EDIT: now proven wrong, both were from Atlantic states, but still not near each other). There is also question as to whether they were on the train at all. They were not found IN the train cars, but along side of the coal dump site, and were not found at the same time nor exactly the same place. I have not found any stories that mention any official cause of death. (EDIT: The man died of asphixiation and the woman from blunt force trauma to the midsection.)
Seems exceptionally dumb to be in an empty coal car… absolutely no way out of that car. Not to mention how do you even get in without hurting yourself? That’s quite a drop from the lip of the car to the bottom.
The operation of railroads have been used to murder people, move bodies and destroy evidence - sometimes all at once - ever since the earliest days of railroading.
I have no idea of the specifics in this case but anything and everything is possible.
Who would have seen them to begin with? Cars are stuck in sidings or moved directly to a coal shute and who is watching? Everything is virtually electronically controlled and operated. Nobody is standing at the coal shute seeing the inside of the cars as the coal is dumped in. So, They could have been dead and dumped in the cars, gotten in and couldn’t get out and died days before the coal was loaded, or got in couldn’t get out and the coal was dumped on them while alive. There is probably a long list of other possiblities. I don’t see how it could seem abnormal in this day and age. How many have been missed because unloading a coal car was by rotary dump or otherwise unloaded without seeing the contents?
But these two are for sure good nominees for and likely winners of the “Darwin Award” for 2011 - they just made the deadline [ [:$] ] by a few days. Definitely an innovative way to lead to one’s demise. (I know - call me insensitive, esp. at this time of the year - but they had several hours if not days to reconsider their choice, not like a split-second grade crossing decision. And how did they think that coal was going to be unloaded, anyway ?)
It’s been said before, but bears repeating: The relative impact forces of a train running into you is about the same as your car running into a bug - with much the same results, unfortunately.
Between this and the video of the Washington, D.C. shooter in an empty CSX coal hopper a few weeks ago - at Shenandoah Jct. ? - on his way up to Pennsylvania, maybe CSX will want the standard ‘roll-by’ inspections of those trains to include a better view down into the cars ? Or install a camera someplace that can do that ? (but why should the railroad bear that added expense . . . [:-^] )
While homicide detectives in Ohio stalked the Cleveland “torso killer” through the latter 1930s, they were periodically distracted by reports of unsolved slayings from the area of New Castle and West Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. No solid link between the crime sprees was established, but coincidence of timing, the proximity of common railway lines, and the unanimous decapitation of victims in both states have produced some tantalizing theories.
As Andrew said, there is no safety around trains. When I was a Police officer assigned to accident investigation, I was sent to investigate a case where a transient had lost both feet in the storage tracks of a grain elevator in the Central West End of St. Louis.
It was a hot summer days and he had laid down to sleep in the shadow of a grain car. He told me he was careful not to be under the car, but as he slept, his legs somehow got across a track. When a switch crew coupled up to the cars and pulled them out, the wheel took both feet off as neatly as a surgeon. There was absolutely no blood and the man survived, but I don’t think he went wandering again.
My main memory of this was that I was breaking in a new officer, and he picked up one of the boots and immediately dropped it. The foot was still in it. I told him we had special equipment in the trunk to handle this sort of thing and so he learned a valuable lesson.
For you rail fans, and to date this story, this was on the Wabash.
Wow. I rode into East St Louis in a boxcar on the Wabash in the summer of 1962. I remember lots of grain elevators in the area. Train hopping was common back then. The crews would even tell you what track they were making a train up on. I took showers several times in yard offices. Yard offices used to have a bunk room with showers, and beds. I was invited to ride in engines and cabooses several times. A brakeman told me to climb up in the second unit and don’t touch anything. He said I would be safer there. Another time a conductor said, “I have a son your age. C’mon back in the caboose. You’ll be safer there”.Things were different then, for sure. But I was always careful. I took the GM&O south from E St Louis, to Mobile, and the L&N from Mobile to New Orleans. Never in a million years would I have climbed into a hopper car.
The Wabash was a pretty friendly railroad in our area. I used to drop into their yard office at Sarah Avenue and have coffee with the crews. They used to ask me not to hassle their hobos and I never did. Some of those guys would get pretty lost sometimes though. I stopped a guy a few blocks from the yards, sober and pretty clean. He asked me how to get to the Crown Center and I told him that was in Kansas City. He thanked me and headed back toward the yards.
By the way, it was about 1963 when the fellow lost his feet.