Metro train hits rail employee as co-worker holds barrier up! Full story at: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2368776 I reccomend visiting the site and checking the pics, as the LRV had an onboard camera!
Some really compelling photographs! There is no excuse for the negligence of the UP employees and the trauma inflicted on the Metro Trainees. Russ
Looking at the pics again, I have a theory... Did the maintainence crew assume that the gates were down for their own hirail truck? (It appears on the right of the pics) It might not excuse it, but it would at least partially explain why they didn't seem to think the gates meant a train was coming! What do you guys think?
From my experience for the most part hyrails do not trigger crossing gates and signals. But that could have been their thought. I have had so many near misses with UP welders I quit counting. They work in pairs so one person is always suppose to be on the look out for traffic but sheezes they don't do a very good job. I've had to put my train into emergency 3 or 4 times because they weren't paying attention and didn't move until the last second. Hopefully this will be awake up call to all UP welders.
I live in Houston. I went on a joy ride on our new light rail system, and it seems like a nice installation. The big issue is that the entire line is at grade. The line has only been operating for a month. Metro has had a lot of problems with cars ignoring the new traffic rules and signals, so there have been a number of similar incidents in the past month. I would have thought that railway employees would have better knowledge and judgement on safety issues than the general Houston population. I would think they would know better than to go around closed crossing gates....
Don, I'd been following the history myself, seems like the general population is still adjusting to some of the traffic changes! Most collisions seem to have been illegal left turns, I've even heard it said that RAIL stands for Ramming All Illegal Lefts!
Martyn, The problem is that the rail line runs up the middle of Main Street in Houston, and it has disrupted traffic flows somewhat. People are mostly ignoring the available signals and prohibitions, which appear to me to be reasonable and adequate. I have some friends who live just off the rail line, and, while it is a little inconvenient with road traffic flow, it is pretty obvious and easy to get around the railway safely. I hope that over time people will become more cautious and follow the rules.
The grade crossing where this collision happened is on a parallel "test" track to the old Houston Belt & Terminal line that went from West Junction into Houston. HB&T has now been broken up between UP and BNSF and that stretch went to UP, therefore the track workers. They were checking the UP track before the big steam engine was going to use it in a few days and doing the required maintenance. It is wide open with good visibility so they could see it coming if they looked. My theory is they did not realize they were doing speed test to break in the new trainset and were running it at 55 MPH instead of the usual 5 to 20 MPH. They thought they could beat the train. I guess they lost. When the 3985 did come by on Monday, it so surprised the light rail crew doing testing on one of the vehicles that they stopped it and just gawked at the steamer as it went by. I guess I would have too.
I saw a news snipit on CNN about how Houston was sprucing up the city and rail for the Super Bowl........... Harold
