Railroaders' Nostalgia > Regarding ROW and Crossing Fatalities on the Head End of trains!

Something not mentioned but it should be.
How about the Conductor and rear Man?
The Hogger being up front has it happen in a manner of seconds. It is over and done with before you know it!
What more can you do?
You don't walk back; maybe a Cab Hop or a couple of cars at most.
But the Rear End goes back. They are the ones that witness what is left.
The Conductor makes the report.
What they have seen would make you sick.
It is the Rear End crew that suffers the visual effects.
Now there are exceptions but they are rare.
Now here is the one exception I had:
Going thru Anaheim Ca, at 65mph, I had a guy step out of the bamboo thicket that covers one end of the VFW's Lodge.
Wham!
After stopping, I descended the ladder. I immediately smelled Liquor. I then knew it was a suicide.
But the guy was stuck on the front of the engine!  Not a drop of Blood!
The pilot had sheared off his legs cleanly. The impact had snapped his neck and his face was pointing towards the locomotive
so you didn't have to deal with that. Nornally he should have landed somewhere back behind the train resulting in the Conductor having to deal
with what was left.
End of Storey.

The last fatality I was involved with was on a NS priority intermodal train in South Carolina.  A small older man timed his walking in an open area in daylight to be able to step in front of our fast approaching train, despite horn warnings.  In my eyes and in my mind it was an intentional suicide.  Now it happened near a county line.  It became a matter of jurisdiction when we hit the man in one county and the body was found in the adjacent county, not really that far from the engines.  The coroner from the second county  didn't understand how the body got so far from the impact point in the first county.  I told her I believed the body on hard impact got stuck to the snowplow of our lead engine - a GEVO ES44-DC and fell off before we ground to a stop.  Evidently she saw validity in that explanation.  After a long delay we left.  The police explained that part of the long delay was the coroner requesting more and more crime tape.  The police said the coroner wanted to put crime tape around our train, which was around 7600 feet long.  The police said they explained to her that they didn't have that much crime tape in the county.  I think it may have been her first train-trespasser strike.

Gruesome, unecessary and tough on everyone involved.
ATSF GM John Landreth was quoted back in the 60's that Trainmen on the Los Angeles Division must have ice water in their veins because of the large population and frequent fatalities in the Southern California area.
I don't think a day goes by without a Metrolink fatality nowadays.
TAH



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/23 08:16 by 90mac.

             Crime scene tape around the entire train!! Now there is a moronic thought and request from the "authority" .

dcfbalcoS1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>              Crime scene tape around the
> entire train!! Now there is a moronic thought and
> request from the "authority" .


They were just doing what they do at any other "crime scene". Seems like the cops straightened out that new coroner.

On my last fatility I was threatened with arrest because I didn't have a drivers lisence. The South Carolina patrol wouldn't take the FRA card for CSX. Said I had to have a drivers lisence issued by the state. He also wanted to do a drug-alcohol test. Forturenally the trainmaster explained things too him. I may have been a little more flexible since it was Chrisymas Eve. That was one where I think it was a suicide. He timed getting on the crossing so I would t-bone him.

Sam

Notch7 wrote: "The police explained that part of the long delay was the coroner requesting more and more crime tape.  The police said the coroner wanted to put crime tape around our train, which was around 7600 feet long."

A far cry from 40 years ago when railroad rule books specified that a crew member would be left behind so the train could proceed without signficant delay. 

When I was in engineer training, I was in a hot westbound at night between Matfield Green and Cassoday, KS. We had an 8700 class GE on the point. We started seeing cattle on the right of way, came around one of the curves, and there was a bunch right on the tracks. I hit the horn and flashed the headlight, but they didn't move much. We hit six or seven, some went under the engine, some went through the air to the right and to the left. We were going about 55 up the hill, and got passed most of them, but the engineer said maybe we better stop. We had a short train, and we slowed down and spotted the conductor on the waycar there to take a look. He said go ahead and stop, after a few minutes, he came back and said "hiball". At Wellington, he told us it was a mess, and there were several cripples hobbling around in pain. Being the old flint hills cowboy he was, (Benny Quadra) he grabs a ball peen hammer from the tool locker and finished each one off with a brain shot to the head. (You can do that with cattle, but not people, it was an ugly scene for him just the same)

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