This is just crazy. https://news.yahoo.com/downed-plane-hit-train-la-063535214.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
That guy was having a bad day..... I wonder why no one called the 1-800 number on the blue sign, they're on every crossing, to tell the dispatcher the situation? Coulda' stopped the train in time.
I have never seen such a sign here. How long does it take to stop one of those kind of trains with passengers? I got told to mind my own business when I did call and so did the police when it happened here.
I see those telephone numbers at every guarded crossing but have used them only twice. Once to report a "hobo" on a covered hopper open area above the truck and another to report vision-impairing brush growth on a rural protected crossing. In both cases, I was thanked profusely. In the first case, the removal of the "Bo" made the local paper's police report a few days later. In the second, the brush was removed within two days. Don't know about other companies, but CSX was on top of their public safety 20+ years ago. BTW, I'm sure I was speaking with the security folks at the dispatcher department in Jacksonville, FL. I reported the Bo on a 49-mph eastbound freight in Gulfport. He was removed in Biloxi, less than 10 miles, only 8 minutes away.
Was a Metrolink train, not Amtrak. Supposedly the number was called, but apparently trains hadn't been notified yet.
I found a video of how this happened. And also how police got there so quickly. this explains things a bit.
There are a lot more grade-crossing collisions than we usually hear about on the news, except for local news. Occasionally, the story hits the national news feeds, like the Ottawa Transpo bus that went through the flashing lights and got its nose clipped off by a VIA rail passenger train. The driver was the only one one killed, many others injured IIRC. Oodles of collisions occur involving tractor-trailers (mostly the trailer part), farm equipment, and other long road vehicles whose length is underestimated by the driver. Or out of just plain negligence. After the Megantic accident some years ago, I researched the subject and was surprised by the sheer number of incidents that just don't make it to the headlines except the local outlets. This one has to be the most unusual events. And lucky - the pilot had the good fortune to crash a stone's throw away from a police station. That saved his life.
Not only is it trains hitting things. Others hit them as well. This happens at the Independence St. RR Bridge in Kansas city a couple times a month. And there plenty of signs to warn: https://www.yahoo.com/news/flat-tops-video-shared-kcpd-011857031.html Everything just keeps getting bigger. Except for our wallets.
Back in the late 80's I believe, BN hit a house in Sumner, Wa...... House movers were moving a house and never notified the railroad, and guess what came along at the crossing?
