A forum member–wrwatkins–asked the following question in another thread. No one has answered it yet and it has me thinking. (Watch out, the wheels are turning) [:0] [;)]
Many years ago (1950’s?) a teenager named Edward Everett Knowles from Boston, I think, lost an arm from trying to catch a train on the way home from school. The surgeons successfully reattached the arm. What ever became of him and did the reattachment take in the long run?
Now his question reminded me of an article in Reader’s Digest many (many) years ago. The article was about a young man riding a boxcar that went into a tunnel (I think) and the young man lost his arm. He had to climb over a fence to get into the yard but I believe his family sued the railroad over it.
Anyway, can anyone add to these stories or even add some others?
In San Antonio, TX last year, a group of late-teens were walking along the tracks that pass through their neighborhood. A young man, upset that his girlfriend had broken-up with him to be with another girl, suddenly pushed her in front of a train, killing her.
The ‘good’ part of this true story is that her last act in life was to hang on to his arm–fighting for her life–and when the train hit her, it took that SOB’s arm clean off!!!
Serves him right.
When I was growing up in Solon, Ohio there was a guy one year younger than me that I knew from school that had been fighting with his parents and ran out. Later that night, he was drunk and fell asleep on the tracks, the Conrail ex Erie line in the middle of town. He was run over, but he lived. He wore a steel halo around his head and had steel rods connected to bars comming out of his legs for about a year.
When I was too young to remember on the same line, a freind of my older brother lost his legs when he tried catch a moving car and when he grabbed the grab iron, his legs swung under the car, he lost his grip and fell.
Just recently on the old BC Rail right-of-way up North, a lady was drunk and stumbled out of a bar and somehow managed to fall asleep between the tracks and the old passenger station platform.
A freight came through and took both of her legs clean off.
Apparently she got herself a good lawyer, and even though she was trespassing she still won a lawsuit against the railway.
Apparently the railroad checked the blackbox and the engineer forgot to ring the bell when he started his movement from a standstill, therefore both him and the conductor got in big trouble.