Broad daylight, cones, advance and restrictive warning signs, etc, in my orange safety vest, summer of 1978 I got hit by car. The idiot was spitting nails that I'd even been there. Huh? All of the safety equipment in this world is useless in the presence of stupidity.
Ok, so does somebody ride the cars and reset the brakes or are the drops limited to mild grades where the cars will stop on their own? I'm trying to visualize this and it seems kinda dicey...
Someone once said, "You can't fix stupid" and they are soooo right. Hi-Vis yellow, strobe lights, signs and audio warnings are somehow not enough for some people,
Well, you guys are close. Those two were part of that Blue Collar group. But the one you're think'n of is Ron White. He's right on with most of his views and pretty funny too. But, he's not quite as family friendly as Foxworthy or Engvall. Was going to link a vid, but I don't think that would be prudent for our forum audience.
As you've probably figured by now a "Drop" and "Flying switch" are the same move on different properties. A "Dutch drop" is where you get the cars moving, cut the engine away, go like hell to a trailing point switch, then run engine in the clear in the the opposite direction toward the cars coming at you. Obviously a Dutch drop is very dangerous. In 42 years of railroading the only dutch drops I ever saw were where the cars would move aided by gravity. A regular drop/ flying switch was an almost daily ritual on the way freights/ locals and seldom was the gravity method able to be used at the location where the drop was needed. Then there were the drops where cars out of the middle of a cut being handled were dropped in the clear and the rear of the cut coupled back up to the cut next to the engine in one move. Dick Haave
