Deputy sheriff vs. frieght train

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  • Vaquero

    Moving stuff to the gas prices thread.....
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    Apr 4, 2011
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    Dixie Land
    I'm normally not caring what y'all come up with.
    This train stuff is different for me.
    I lost some friends and fellow linemen a long time ago.
    4 guys in a (new at that time) extended cab truck. Wire spool trailer hung up on an unimproved crossing. One guy got out. 3 died in a fiery wreck. I attended 3 closed casket funerals in one day. I've never trusted a train crossing signal since.
    Sometimes life kicks you in the nuts and walks off laughing.
     

    baboon

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    May 6, 2008
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    Out here by the lake!
    Hell a Barrett magazine full of Raufoss .50 bmg would do it if you put them in the right places!
    IMG_3980.jpg
     

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    Frank59

    Wheel Gunner
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    May 14, 2018
    1,897
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    San Angelo
    I'm normally not caring what y'all come up with.
    This train stuff is different for me.
    I lost some friends and fellow linemen a long time ago.
    4 guys in a (new at that time) extended cab truck. Wire spool trailer hung up on an unimproved crossing. One guy got out. 3 died in a fiery wreck. I attended 3 closed casket funerals in one day. I've never trusted a train crossing signal since.
    Sometimes life kicks you in the nuts and walks off laughing.
    The first funeral I went to I was 16 years old. Classmate of mine had just gotten his DL and was taking his mothers car for a spin in the dark in a rural part of South Texas and was killed by a train at a crossing with no lights or signs. That was pretty common where I grew up in 1975. The no lights and signs part that is.
     

    Double Naught Spy

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    Mar 4, 2008
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    Actually, two cruisers drove around the barricade. Only the first got hit by the train coming from the opposite direction. They were responding to a call about a child having difficulty breathing (so why do you need 2 cruisers?).

    I understand that cops get to break some laws when on emergency calls, but they don't get to break the laws of physics. As my wife, a former bus driver calls it, "gross tonnage right of way." The train has it.

    So the crossed when the lights were blinking. They went around the barricade. They failed to notice the oncoming train's horn. All the multiple appropriate warnings were in place and working as designed. The first deputy failed to look before crossing the second set of tracks.

    The ironic thing is that the sheriff's office worked a semi-truck and train collision there on the previous day.
     

    FireInTheWire

    Caprock Crusader
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    I'm normally not caring what y'all come up with.
    This train stuff is different for me.
    I lost some friends and fellow linemen a long time ago.
    4 guys in a (new at that time) extended cab truck. Wire spool trailer hung up on an unimproved crossing. One guy got out. 3 died in a fiery wreck. I attended 3 closed casket funerals in one day. I've never trusted a train crossing signal since.
    Sometimes life kicks you in the nuts and walks off laughing.
    I need to do a better job at this. I cross a train going home. I catch myself just blowing through the crossing without looking sometimes. Bad habit.
     

    popper

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    Double track wrecks are the problem. Most common wreck with trains. Media here is trying to get the state to do something about it, forget to say it is the RR property, not state. For rural unmarked tracks, visibility is the problem, corn is too high or trees block view of the track. Generally not caused by the RR Co. Plus vehicle drivers are idiots.
     

    benenglish

    Just Another Boomer
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    Nov 22, 2011
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    Spring
    in the dark in a rural part of South Texas and was killed by a train at a crossing with no lights or signs.
    IIRC, it was somewhere around Dunlay circa 1976 when I was driving my Dad's Cadillac, windows up, radio blaring, with 6 girls carrying on 8 conversations at the top of their lungs. It was about midnite and we were on some little piece of pavement out in the boonies. I came up to a train crossing that was not just uncontrolled but heavily wooded on both sides. You couldn't see if anything was coming or going. (ETA - In that moment, I actually didn't know it was a train crossing. I started slowing simply because it was a huge bump in the road.)

    But something was wrong even though I didn't know what. My sensory inputs changed and I didn't realize until afterward how. In any event, I slowed to a stop and the train blew right past us at very high speed, 5 feet off the front bumper.

    All the talk stopped. Someone turned off the radio. Every girl in that car thanked me with a sincerity I haven't heard before or since. We had all been touched by crossing mishaps where someone we knew or loved had died or been seriously injured. It was a big problem in that area in those days. So everyone in the car knew they had cheated death; it was a very, very sobering incident for all of us.

    Oh, the sensory inputs? I didn't know the train was coming because I couldn't hear it and couldn't see it. However, the train headlight was dancing on the trees in front of me and my brain couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. I stopped for that reason, only. I didn't realize there was a train until it was flying by in front of me.

    I've lived 43 years longer than I otherwise would have simply because my instinct was "Something weird is happening here. I should stop and assess before proceeding."

    For most of my life, I've considered myself too tentative for my own good. Most of life is best lived boldly, proceeding forward without pause. Sometimes, though, "tentative" is exactly the right mindset.

    In case you can't tell, that incident left more than a small impression on me.
     

    TheMailMan

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    Dec 3, 2015
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    North of Kaufman
    Back in the '80's when I was living in eastern Washington there was a local family that had a couple of mobile homes on the other side of the tracks. The railroad tracks paralleled the road for several miles.

    In the space of less than 18 months three members of that family were killed by trains. They were all coming home drunk as skunks sometime between 3-4 in the morning. All three made the right hand turn into the road to their homes and ran into the train. The same damn train that they had been driving by for at least a mile. This was an uncontrolled crossing. The road served only their property.

    The family tried to sue the railroad. They came to find out that their railroad track crossing was unapproved by the track owner and was therefor illegal. They lost all access to their 1.5 acres and two mobile homes.

    I felt it was Darwin at work.
     
    Every Day Man
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