Strange..

Stop riding with this guy, you might be next!

Did you have crackers for lunch?

My friend is an engineer and he hit a guy laying on the tracks once. Fucked him up for months after seeing the guy cut in three pieces.

I thought this was a "going out on the town" thread.

In my area this is not unusual. We have a railroad track that runs right through the center of town. We've had several pedestrian fatalities on RR tracks. People constantly walk the RR tracks as a shortcut . We've had several drunks fall asleep on the RR tracks and get run over! We even had one sucicide where one of the town drunks laid down and placed his head across the tracks. I've got a pic of it somewhere at the office. I look at is as natural selection. You gotta be pretty freaking stupid to get run over by a train! I mean, they only travel along those giant metal rails and they can't exactly sneak up on you!

"Strange" based on the title, I was expecting to see pictures of Tigers chicks or read a story bout some fool getting caught the day after X-Mas.

Trains can sneak up on you, especially transit and AMTRAK Acela trains. The Acela travels the Northeast corridor well over 100MPH (147 ft./sec.) and all you see is a bright light that is coming towards you, very hard to judge speed and distance until its on you. You can hear the metal/electric crackling ahead of time but by then the train is only 4-5 seconds away.

A SEPTA track inspector was killed in Philadelphia just after the World Series finished. He was walking on the tracks with another SEPTA worker when the train, traveling southbound on northbound tracks due to an equipment problem, approached from behind and struck the victim. He and the flagger were not notified of the equipment problem.

I inspect bridges along both of these lines and when there are mulitple tracks, it is very hard to figure out which track the train is on and how fast it is moving.

Even freight trains are dangerous. I've had the occasion where we cleared a freight track by moving to the top of the embankment, about 40' from the track and 20' above the railbed. One lowboy flatbed car carrying lumber had a broken steel banding strap that was flapping along 20' off the side of the rail and cutting off 3" diameter saplings 5'-10' above the railbed. The flagger said the train was traveling about 45 mph.

Not in our area. They are all freight trains and you can hear them miles away. We have a 25mph speed limit on them through town also and I swear the engineers live to blow those freakin' horns. Our PD is right next to the RR tracks. It runs by about 50 times a day. You should see the looks on peoples faces in my office if they have never been in the PD when a train has come by. The entire building vibrates and it sounds like it's gonna come through a wall!

A friend of my grandfathers was an engineer. Apparently suicides on train tracks wasnt terribly uncommon.

When II was a kid growing up in Chicago the train tracks were our playground. You have to be a real dummy to get hit by a train. I could ride my BMX bike on a track for miles.

I could write a book of all the bad things I have seen at work on the tracks.

Happens a lot down here especially throught the Encinitas / Cardiff area for some reason.

there's an Encinitas/Cardiff area in GBR, too?

You don't get it......his heart is in England.

And his head is in his ass.