GLENCOE - Inside the train a jolt, then the scream of metal ripping, wooden ties splintering, steel slashing gravel and a hundred voices rising in panic.
Outside the train, a pickup truck crumpled and thrown into a ditch.
The collision of a truck and Via passenger train west of Glencoe on Friday morning sent the 22-year-old truck driver, John Jobson of Southwest Middlesex, to hospital, where he was fighting for his life.
The crash also injured at least six people and shook up many more of the 99 passengers and seven crew on board…
…and a little further…
Police couldn’t confirm how the collision occurred, but passengers in the rear of the train and residents of a nearby house say the truck struck close to the end of the last car.
UUmmmmmmm…question. Did this fellow know that the train was on the grade and think that he could continue through the grade as the last car was just going through the grade crossing?[*-)]
Theses stories should report pickup truck driver instead of just truck driver. A pickup driver is generally not a pro…whereas a truck driver is a trained professional. Not saying that truck drivers don’t have accidents or don’t do stupid things are rail crossings… but that doesn’t appear to be the case here.
What’s with all of these collisions with vehicles hittings trains and causing so much damage to the train, even knocking it off the tracks? It used to be that when a vehicle hit a train, the vehicle would just bounce off in a much damaged condition.
I’m still wondering how the Amtrak incident in Nevada caused so much damage to the train; after all, it was just an empty truck. If had been going full speed, then sure; but there were all those skid marks which would seem to indicate the truck was not going too fast when it hit (unless it was REALLY bookin’ when the driver hit the skids…)
If any incident would seem to been of sufficient force to derail a train, it would have been the Nevada one, not this one with a mere pickup truck!
The road is not exactly a heavily traveled one either…
I do remember this little trick…we used to come down this road…stop at the tracks…listen…then cross…simples…
the thing about this is I’m wondering what happened that the dude drove…supposedly…into the last part of the last car there…and why it knocked the train off the tracks the way it did