New way of looking at ROAD KILL... Not to make light of death either but I believe in most cases (99.99%) that those that do get hit are on the wrong end of the Darwin curve. Why do people think a train can stop on a time and/or change direction to avoid hitting you just does not understand how trains work. I think that's why most Railfans are not those that the RR Companies (& Homeland Security) need to be afraid of. In any case it's a good reminder to always be safe arond operating equipment. Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
I know a bit about trains (railfan and reading, not professional) so I give them due care in any case. But even if I didn't know trains even as much as I do, I have great respect for physics. If my 2000lbs of car tangles it up with four hundred thousand pounds of locomotive, I'd better hope that I can do the Lord's Prayer in the fraction of a second that I have left. Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
Ya know the last thing to go through a fly's mind as he hits a loco head-on is his Butt! Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
at that point, you don't really know what it is, other than it was meat of some sort, and it smells... moose, cow, deer are common that get washed off in my yard... when you don't see fur, and it has already been partially cleaned, you know something bad happened Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
I sense a new N scale scene.....I wonder how you model splattered moose.... Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
I fall into the local law enforcement category myself. We have a main line (3 rails) going through town carrying daytime commuters and around the clock freight. Now I've had all kinds of calls around the tracks... including the "I can beat the train" fatalities, the "Opps I turned the wrong way and my car doesn't fit down these tracks", and "The train will stop because my car is stalled right?" I've even stopped one or two trains in my long carreer. By I've never ever had a call asking us to check out someone taking pictures... Sorry, just had to add that. Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
Welcome Jon, Sounds like you spent some time and energy around the (former) C & NW tracks! CT Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
A few, I'll chose a humorous one. I don't see me doing a sad one. But not all humorous stories start out that way. One night a freight is coming down from somewhere in Chicago and plows into someone who mistakinly had turned onto and attempted to drive down the tracks. This is almost always either a very confused person or a drunk. But even the confused person will stop before they get too far. Well this night our dirver makes it over a hundred feet down the tracks before their car gets hung up. The first thing we know is when we get a call of an explosion. As we are racing there Duvall tower (CN&W's control center) calls us to tell us there has been a train vs car collision. Not a good omen. Upon arrival there is a big diesel loco stopped in the middle of what looks like a debris field. There wasn't any part of that car that was bigger than say 1X1 feet. The train must have caught it and just rended it as it was stopping. So anyway, here we all are: cops, train people, firemen, all wandering around trying to locate the body. The last thing you want to have happen is some citizen happening upon a body by accident. After a while, myself and another officer are trying to figure out where the collision occured and what kind of force was applied so we can start looking at the trajectory a body may have traveled (we were that puzzled by the lack of a body) when the train hit. The other possibility (the gross one) is that the body got just as ground up in the wreck as the car. If so, we would be looking at closing the tracks and area until we could conduct a full search in daylight. Again you just can't have people finding body parts. As bad as a train accident is, this problem would have magnified it like ten fold. Service disruptions, media descending upon you, all the brass from the railroad, feds, and our own agency... As sad as it sounds, finding a body would make like a lot easier, believe me. Anyway, while we are standing there contemplating all of this a woman walks up to us. We turn and tell her that this isn't a good place to be and that she's in the middle of a crime scene. Of course she's drunk. Where the heck she came from no one knows, but she says, "Can you tell me where my car is? I got stalled here a little while ago." Go figure.... (As to the question about what lines run throug town. Yes, primarily CN&W now Metra.) [ March 18, 2006, 12:18 AM: Message edited by: JonP ] Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
Hey, This is a great thread.Very funny,yet informative.Good job everybody, Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
LOL .. As a retired law enforcemnt officer, I can relate to that story. Drunks can do the darndest things! Welcome to Trainboard Jon. Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
Actually she was quite mad when she was drunk and just as mad the next day. She was sure that the enginner deliberatley ran her car over and couldn't understand why he wouldn't stop when he saw the car on the rails. I do remember her telling me that the story the railroad gave her about "it takes a long time to stop a locomotive with thirty cars behind it" was pure Bullsxxt! Pointing out to her that she was lucky to be alive only got her to say something like (I'm recalling now it was 15 years ago) "Ya, well if they did I'd own this railroad!" So we just figured it was pointless. Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
Actually she was quite mad when she was drunk and just as mad the next day. She was sure that the enginner deliberatley ran her car over and couldn't understand why he wouldn't stop when he saw the car on the rails. I do remember her telling me that the story the railroad gave her about "it takes a long time to stop a locomotive with thirty cars behind it" was pure Bullsxxt! Pointing out to her that she was lucky to be alive only got her to say something like (I'm recalling now it was 15 years ago) "Ya, well if they did I'd own this railroad!" So we just figured it was pointless. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Never try to teach a pig to sing or argue with a drunk (even after they sober up). It will only frustrate you and annoy the pig/drunk... She must have flunked physics class. It only took one time of having a train pass by my house when growing up and feeling the ground shake to figure out that thing was MASSIVE and deserve MUCH respect... And this long before I even knew the WORD physics... Copyright 2008 Jerry DeBene
