Railroaders' Nostalgia > No way to start your day-SP Valley Div.

Called for a westbound local out of Bakerfield Yard. There was a man next to us that had been called OD ahead of us, also a road swither job.
Well after the usual wait that always happens on every RR in the United States, as you well know, the job next to us started pulling. Well they didn't
go very far, maybe 6 or 7 car lengths. Then the Radio exploded and they came to an immediate stop. There was a vague reference to a fatality.
We bailed off to see what had happened.
Oh Wow!
A man had placed his neck on the rail just in front of the car wheel and waited  for the train to move. Can you believe that? We , of course, didn't get to
close as there was a crowd there already. Anyhow the wheel just rolled over his neck but did not cut his head off. There was next to no "gore" or blood.
The  guy had slacks on and a long sleeved dress shirt. This was no accident nor was he a transient or Hobo. What motivates people to do this?
Welcome to Railroading!

We had two suicides like this in our ex-SP yard in Albany during the time I worked for Portland & Western. The second happened to be our train, headed across town to the OE yard,  Guy was standing by the highway overpass supports doing nothing (I saw him in my locomotive mirror while we were waiting for UP to give us the green signal). We got going, I never looked back until the radio went off - "Where are you when are you going to be back, there's a problem.  UP shut down the main line due to its proximity to the deceased and the local police so we couldnt get back to talk to our Trainmaster or whoever wanted to talk with us. That was the only fatality I had in 22 years on the P&W.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/23 22:09 by roustabout.

Briefly: we had a local years ago run over a guy while shoving. The conductor was a Vietnam vet (101st Airborne), and rushed to help his brakeman, who was on the point when they hit the guy. I made the comment to a T/M that at least the con was used to seeing that stuff. The T/M, very civilly (and properly) corrected me: "You never get used to it."

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/23 07:25 by RetiredHogger.

ApproachCircuit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A man had placed his neck on the rail just in
> front of the car wheel and waited  for the train
> to move. 

Sadly a very similar incident happened on the ex-Southern.  A college student ran out from behind an overpass column just before the engine moved and put his head down just ahead of the rear engine truck.  A note was found in his backpack.  The engineer needed counseling after the sad incident.

I was conductor on a road switcher out of Idaho Falls, ID at on duty at 2100. We were hauling potatoes from the Idaho Falls -Blackfoot area on the Montana Sub to Pocatello to go east. Uneventful trip as far as we knew, usually back in IF and tied up around 0500. Got a phone call later that day asking if we had seen anybody near the tracks on the way down or a body on the return trip. Apparently someone had tried to get on our train on the way down as we were doing 40 mph. It didn't turn out well for him. 

A Yeoman Yard (Tampa), switching crew kicked a gondola into a track and one of the crew heard a scream.
On checking, a transient was sitting in the gondola with a load of re-bar.  The re-bar shifted when the car was
kicked, impaling the Hispanic transient.  A backhoe got the re-bar off the guy and Tampa Fire Rescue got him 
out of the gondola. He didn't walk out of the hospital.  
I didn't go watch.

Max