re: Train hits car in KY. Video

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CENLALSUFAN

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I don't know of any sober person that runs thru a four way stop sign intersection without stopping. The same should apply to crossing railroad tracks. In my 41 years of riding trains for a living I was involved in at least two dozen crossing incidents. Three of them resulted in a fatality. Number two is still etched in my memory. After the train got stopped, I walked back to where the driver had been ejected from his truck and was laying in a ditch. A horrific gurgling sound was coming from his mouth as he was taking his last breaths. I shined my lantern on him and his left jawbone was sticking about three inches out the side of his jaw with blood everywhere.

Found out later he was drunk and never even hit his brakes before broadsiding the fuel tank of the engine. Of course the hobo I found one night cut completely in half doesn't help me get to sleep at night either.

It seems like some engineers or conductors are a magnet for accidents...one engineer has had a couple with only a few months separating them...I come close one other time besides the backhoe when I was training to be an engineer...it was a crossing that didn't have lights or gates, just a little back road crossing...she processed over like it was an ordinary day and nothing was different..until we were about two tank cars away from her..she looked up and I could see the look of fright in her face like she done screwed up... luckily she didn't freeze and punched the gas..I had to ask my conductor if she made it, that's how close she was...if I got that depressed/pissed by that close of a call, I don't want to experience what I go through after an accident..

One of the more humorous incidents I was involved in was in the piney woods of southern Ark. I'm on a train coming around a curve at about two in the morning and we see a red reflection in the track about a half mile away. We're doing about 25 mph. Hoghead applies the brakes and we stop short by about 60 feet. At a small gravel crossing is a car at a 45 degree angle pointed head-end into a steep ditch with rear wheels off the ground and rear of car fouling the tracks. we walked down to the car noticing both front doors wide open. The engineer looks down in the front floorboard and here's a redneck passed smooth out. The engineer goes to shaking on the guy telling him to wake up and move his car, we have to get to El Dorado. Poor sumbitch, the drunk, raises his head a little, rubs his eyes and says just as seriously as he can - "can't it wait til morning?" We laughed our asses off.

The other brakeman shoved the poor fellow out of the way so he could get behind the wheel. Us other two climbed on the back bumper to get some traction and drove the car on down in he ditch to clear the tracks, shut the doors and got back on the train and went our merry way. We didn't even call the police figuring the old boy had had enough excitement for one night.

That sorry would have hit epic proportions if you would have said that you eased the train right up to the car and just laid on the horn and started flashing the lights...sure he would have shite himself after that..but still pretty good..who do/did you work for..I'm with UP hired out of Livonia but work in Donaldsonville/Avondale at times..caught a guy about 2 years ago jacking off on the front if the engine in the house track..jumped off and ran to his trailer across the street and started going back at it on the porch while flipping us off...pretty sure he wasn't all there, mentally..