COLUMBUS, Wis. (AP) – A freight train ran into about two dozen cattle that had strayed onto railroad tracks in southwestern Dodge County Wednesday, leaving bloody remains scattered for over about a mile and a half.
Sheriff Todd Nehls said the collision killed 20 to 25 steers, but there was no damage to the Canadian Pacific train and no rail workers were injured.
According to the sheriff, a herd of about 35 cattle had escaped from a pasture in the town of Elba and walked on the railroad tracks toward Columbus for about a mile before the eastbound freight going about 50 mph hit the animals at 1 p.m.
The owner of the cattle worked with authorities to get the dead animals removed.
Most of the carcasses and dismembered parts had been loaded onto trucks by 5 p.m.
Nehls described the scene as “quite the mess” after the accident, with pieces of the steers spread down the tracks a mile and a half.
Some of the cattle that survived were injured so badly they might have to be euthanized, he said.
And I’d expect that it was rather upsetting to the train crew (not to mention making the track inspector’s job rather undesireable for the next few weeks). I hope they got the locomotives hosed off.
What’s the sight distance there for the train ? At 1:00 PM = daylight, could they see the cattle ? Or is that area so snowed in now that the tracks were essentially the only open path,and the cattle had no place else to go to get off the tracks ?
This may bring back a forgotten kind of legal case - the farmer-sues-railroad-for-livestock-on-the-tracks, which was a staple of the court dockets back in the day. What the legal theories were then, I don’t know - proabably been superseded since then by pro-railroad laws, esp. for escaped cattle such as this. But if they were each prize animals and worth a couple thousand $ each (as they always are, of course), then who knows . . . ?
Paul, you reminded me of how regular passengers and crewmen shared dinner after the diner was removed from what was left of the Peoria Rocket. Food would be either cooked or re-heated on a part of the diesel engine, and one evening, a non-regular passenger asked about something that he smelled, and he was told, “Oh, it’s just something the engine hit.”
It is amazing, when a railroad runs over livestock on the Right of Way it is never anything less that the Grand Champion of the local County Fair, sometimes even the State Fair.
The first part of your post is exactly the story I had in mind - I think “Manifold Chef” is how that engineer signed his Christmas cards or something else like that.
I’d forgotten the 2nd part until you posted it. I’m pretty sure that if you go back and reread it, the passenger wasn’t just smelling the food, he was also partaking in the meal. And then the punchline:
“The engineer said he came up on it too fast to tell what it was.” [(-D]
Thanks for remembering. That was a great article, in so many ways. Kind of like the Simon & Garfunkle song, “Its all happening at the railroad”.
I think a claim agent somewhere said something like “I am convinced that nothing in the world works better at improving the breed of cattle than crossing it with a locomotive.”
Without knowing specifically the lay of the land here, I suspect that little could have been done to save the errant cattle. They probably didn’t know how to react if the engineer sounded his horn, and you don’t want to risk your train by dumping the air. I suspect that the only thing that could have been done was a nice, easy stop short of the “obstruction”, and that would be only if they had a mile or more of visibility–and with that much distance, the question would be whether the stop would be necessary.
At least the farmer’s cooperating, at least according to the article I read
The article says that the cattle walked about a mile, that it was a double track, and that the incident occurred where Route 60 has an overpass of the railroad. So we can surmise that the slopes at the overpass may have restricted the cattle from moving off the R-O-W - but what about the other track ? Then again, others more knowledgeable than me in such things have said that beef cattle are notoriously stupid. That would be understandable when - already in unfamiliar surroundings - they were suddenly confronted with a big fast-moving loudly bleating and bell-ringing red shape, with 1 glaring light and 2 flashing lights - “Which way do we go ? Which way do we go ?” No time to elect a leader or “alpha male” or whatever steers do - and even if they had, probabaly not enough time after recognizing the danger for more than a few to follow the leader off the tracks. As Ben Franklin said 200+ years ago, “Good fences make good neighbors !” Still true.
Ostrich burgers are good! There used to be a fast food place that sold ostrich burgers on the east end of the Colombia River Gorge.[C=:-)]My friend and I went there regularly to get an ostrich burger.Then a Mc Dogmeats was built across the street and put it out of business.[:(!]
If the train is moving at 50 mph; it can take 1/2 to a full mile to get the train stopped. If he thought he could get stopped before he arrived at the cattle - He would try it. But ‘dumping the air’ in an emergency stop may cause other train related issued as well.
As far as who pays? The insurance companies can work that out. The farmer has first fault due to a failure of his fencing system to contain the livestock.
Doesn’t the railroad in some cases have the responsibility of keeping up the fence? I remember years ago a RI section foreman telling the agent he had to get some barbed wire to repair a fence on his section. When I was volunteering on the Boone & Scenic Valley, one day when out with the track gang we repaired fence.
You’re right, Jeff. The responsibility for fencing was usually spelled out in the terms and conditions of the original franchise under which the original railway was built. Most franchises granted by the states required the railway to construct and maintain fencing, and in most cases the railways has absolute liability for any loss or damage to livestock, as well as fields and crops burned by locomotive sparks. A cow hit by a train is a cow now owned by the railway.
I don’t know about federal franchises – I think in some cases there was no burden upon the railway and the livestock owner had to erect and maintain the fence if he wanted to keep his livestock off the track, and the railway had no express liability if the fence fell down and the cow got whacked by a train. And in other cases, the railway had to erect the fence only on the lands it received in a land grant, and only when it sold the land. And in other cases the railway had the same responsibility it had under state franchises, but only in lands that were suitable for agriculture and livestock raising.
But I could be totally wrong about the federal franchises; all I know is there is quite a bit of railway in the arid West that has no fencing.
I was just poking fun at Mc Dogmeats![(-D] Very funny! I think that an SD40-2 etc. is just as good of butcher as a hometown butcher is! He hE hE he…[swg]
If you hit 20 cows on the track, it is probably a good idea to come to a safe, controlled stop to make sure everything is ok on the engine. (all hoses and lights are there, plow isn’t hanging by a thread, steps aren’t bashed up beyond use, etc)