One thing you don't mention. You are making the RRs sound like it is never their fault. There however is a very small amount of exceptions. While getting of the CANADIAN in Matsqui, BC, the RR crossing gates were down and every one stopped there car to wait it out. Then, the crew of the Canadian relized it was their train that was causing the gates to be down (they were waiting for a freight) so they did that right thing and backed up the train. Then, the train comes through with dim lights for the Canadian engineers and the crosssing gates didn't go down for some reason. With the train coming over a curve it would be hard to see it with dim lights on. I am suprised there were no problems with that. It was a dangerous situation. If that freight had gotten even close to a truck, or car it would destroy in a second. Happy Railroading! Dane N. ------------------ TAMR2860-AKA BC Rail King TAMR2860@Canada.com for TAMR info. To send a general TRAIN! E-Mail send to BCRailKing@Canada.com
FYI: Check out the Amtrak forum under "UP wusses out". And the RR's never at fault? HA! ------------------ RAILROADING-TO-THE-MAX, Burlington Northern/Santa Fe Style! Brent Tidaback, Member #234
hopefully soon i will be posting pics of the NS's latest accident near Decatur, Il. in which a criple crown kissed a tandem axle fertilizer truck. unfortunately the driver didn't survive but there is no grossness in the pics so noone will be gagged out. waiting for them to come back from developer. ------------------ Norfolk Southern The Pack Mule of Transportation Mo-Pac RULES Heritage N-Scale Group, Joliet, Il.
I would really like to see those... would it be possible to email them to me when you get them? ------------------ Bannon C Woods Jr VIA Rail Canada Safety, Health & Environment
Caught some kids by surprise on one of our bridges the other day. I wish you could have seen their asses move when they heard our horn. We were going about 30 and it didn't take long to get on the bridge. They couldn't make it off the bridge in time and found any little peice of steel they could to climb out on. We got stopped one locomotive length passed them. So we walked back to the other unit and found them almost even with the cab door. This made it real easy to tell them to get off the bridge. I did it very politely since they were polite to us. One of them then asked me if we could please move the train so they could get off the bridge. The bridge was a through truss, 2 span, single track bridge with no walkways. You should have seen my engineer grab AIR and HORN when we came around the corner and I screamed "kids on the bridge". It was only about 100 yards to the bridge. Fortunatly we had a short train of passenger cars and could stop relatively quickly without going into emergency. But still it wasn't quick enough because we went right past them. If we had gone into emergency I don't know if we would have stopped any sooner because we would have lost traction on the rails and slid. I suppose we gone further than we did, and possibly wrecked the train and killed people.
Its all too often we hear about kids playing n bridges, or fishing on bridges, playing in freight yards and walking on tracks. When you were a kid didnt your parents tell you to stay away from tracks? mine sure did, Its a shame how many children we lose every year due to this kind of thing, this is one of the reasons why I participate when I can in Operation Lifesaver. Its a great way to teach kids about the dangers on tracks. Bannon ------------------ Bannon C Woods Jr VIA Rail Canada Safety, Health & Environment
