Eastern Railroad Discussion > Train hits UFO, Paintsville, KY 2001

I happened to come across this report of where a CSX locomotive hit a UFO near Paintsville, KY in Jan 2002. Does anyone remember hearing or seeing anything about this incident?

Below is a copy of the report:

Occurred : 1/14/2002 02:47 (Entered as : 01/14/02 2:47)
Reported: 4/3/2006 11:51:27 AM 11:51
Posted: 5/15/2006
Location: Paintsville, KY
Shape: Disk
Duration:15 minutes
Train Collision

At exactly 2:47 a.m. on Jan. 14 02, while working a coal train enroute from Russell Kentucky to Shelbiana Kentucky, our trailing unit and first two cars were severely damaged as we struck an unknown floating or hovering object. I know it was 2:47 because my watch froze, and to this day shows that time. Along with my watch the entire electrical systems on both locomotives went haywire.

Approaching a bend near milepost cmg 42 in an area referred to as the wild kingdom, for the many different types of animals spotted there, my conductor and I saw lights coming from around the way. This ordinarily means another train is coming and will pass on the other track. The outlay of the area is this, the river, #1 track, #2 track and a straight up mountainside, carved out for the laying of these tracks. I killed our lights as not to blind the oncoming crew.

As we rounded the corner our onboard computer began to flash in and out, speed recorder went nuts, and both locomotives died. Alarm bells began to ring and that's when we saw the objects. Apparently scanning the river for something, the objects, (at least 3) had several "search" lights trained there, the first object hovered about 10 to 12 feet above the track.

Metallic silver in color with multiple colored lights near the bottom and in the middle, no windows or openings of any kind that we could see. Approximately 18 to 20 feet in length and probably ten feet high.

With both engines dead as we rounded the corner we made little noise and the first object did not respond in time, I estimate that we hit the object at 30 mph with 16,000 trailing tons behind us. It clipped the top of our lead unit then skipped back slicing a chunk out of our trailing unit and first two coal cars. The other objects vanished into thin air.

Our emergency brakes had initiated due to the loss of power and we stopped approximately a mile and a half to two miles after impact. Our power restored after we were stopped and we notified our dispatcher, located in Jacksonville Fla. of what had happened.

We were told to inspect the cars to see if they'd hold the rail and try to limp into milepost cmg 60 which used to be the Paintsville yard which is no longer in full operation. We checked everything out and the cab of the rear locomotive was demolished and smoking, the second two cars looked as if they had been hit with a giant hammer but looked like they'd hold the rail.

We pulled into Paintsville yard at approximately 5:15 am. The huge overhead lights lining the yard were noticeably dark and the only lights came from what we assumed were railroad officials vehicles parked near the end of the track. We pulled to a stop and began unloading our grips off the wounded train.

We could hear what sounded like an army of workers immediately tending to our train. Vehicle doors slamming, guys running by in weird outfits and lights glaring from all directions, the one thing missing was railroad officials.

A guy named Ferguson shook my hand and asked me to follow him into the old yard office. We did, once inside they, and by they I mean I have no idea who these people were, began to ask us hundreds of questions, they then told us for our own protection we'd be medically tested before we could leave.

I asked repeatedly to talk to my road foreman or trainmaster and not only were these requests denied but they confiscated my conductors cellular phone.

Hours later we were led outside the old yard office and the strange things continued to happen, the 2 locomotives and two cars were removed from the rest of the train we had brought in and my only guess was parked 4 tracks over under a huge tent like structure buzzing with activity. We were lead off property and told due to national security our silence on this matter would be appreciated.

We were then put in a Railroad vehicle and taken to Martin Kentucky were we went through questioning again with railroad officials and were then drug tested.

After all of this we were sent on to Shelbiana, where we took rest for 8 hours and worked another train back to Russell. Working back we passed by Paintsville, no sign of the engines, cars, tent, people, nothing.


BaltoJoey

You should have posted this on April 1st.

Dave

Call Mulder and Scully...

I'm not saying I believe it. I was wondering if anyone had heard about this? I did a little more checking and found a photo of CSX engine #3 in Huntington shops. Supposedly this is the second unit on the train that was damaged. It shows damage to the roof of the cab and the engineer's window smashed in.

BaltoJoey

http://ufos.about.com/od/ufocrashes/p/paintsville.htm

No big thing, these aren't the first guys out night fishing and not paying attention to the train!
—Mac

I saw this report and photos a couple of months ago. The full story by a supposed employee had some
comments that would indicate the person had working knowledge of railroading, but the whole thing
had an odd "flavor" about it. Most folks, not just fans, have a quick reaction that anything this
unusual must be nuts, thus no serious investigation is really possible. Few fans would risk the
derisive response to try and find out if there is anything to this. IF you want to see the report
go to www.rense.com/general71/train.htm

The rense site is dedicated to the paranormal, conspiracies, etc. Some of the stuff is silly, but
like glancing at the Enquirer in the super market line, still worth a quick look. The photo of
CSX 3 under repair is not directly connected in the report as the unit involved. If the author had just given
the supposed numbers it would be a lot easier to check. As I never saw any other reports on this
supposed event, it is most likely bogus.

OK, after posting I see another post links to a different site with similar wording. At least there
is another site reporting the same basic info.

Keith A

I think this is the work of Ivo Sandor and Gozer the Gozerian worshippers.

ConrailTV-6 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think this is the work of Ivo Sandor and Gozer
> the Gozerian worshippers.


Speaking of Gozer...

I think this incident was mentioned on this site:

http://www.mufon.com/

Dan Akroyd supports MUFON. So it MUST be true.

CG Tower

>Our emergency brakes had initiated due to the loss
>of power and we stopped approximately a mile and a
>half to two miles after impact. Our power restored
>after we were stopped and we notified our dispatcher,
>located in Jacksonville Fla. of what had happened.

A consistent feature of UFO reports is to include how the electonics and watches go whacko and engines shut down, but gee-

They set the pneumatics into emergency?????

And, it took a mile and a half to two miles to stop 14000 tons from 30 mph in emergency???? Must have been about a 6% downgrade.

Yeah, right. Whoever wrote this has only enough knowledge of railroading and physics to embarrass him/herself.

I cannot fathom the mysterious type of post-accident analysis of the equipment as described here without a similar analysis of the crash scene looking for UFO parts alongside the tracks in the dark of night.

While this crew may have been 'out of reach' of any post-accident happenings during their rest, any analysis of the crash scene would have affected other trains and held up other traffic in the area as well, leading to a service disruption corroberation of sorts from other crews still on duty aboard other trains.

The FRA accident database also lists a rockfall inside a tunnel in the area happening on 1-12-02. Apparently the crew saw the rocks, stopped, tried to radio when inside the tunnel (without success) and then when rocks started to fall again backed the train up until the air dumped when cars derailed on account of being on top of a spring switch.

Also, what facilities does CSX have in Martin KY?

Sounds like part of the storyline for "Men in Black III".

http://frankwarren.blogspot.com/2006/06/further-analysis-of-trainufo-collision.html

Been discussing this one for a month or so. Much information here, much back and forth discussion with a CSX Big Sandy engineer. Think we both pissed each other off. By the way, I'm the one who provided the shot of CSX #3 inside HLS with roof damage. No mention of anything unearthly at the time but no one I asked seemed to know how the roof got damaged. Didn't think anything about it until this story came up and I was asked by a UFO investigator if I knew anything about the general area. I made some statements about stopping distances and radio usage and got blasted. Read and digest..............

Sounds like we need to start beaming Operation Lifesaver messages into space.

MTMEngineer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> A consistent feature of UFO reports is to include
> how the electonics and watches go whacko and
> engines shut down, but gee-
>
> They set the pneumatics into emergency?????

Ummmm ... I'm not sure how much you know about modern equipment, but locomotives equipped with electronic air brake equipment will intiate an application when a power loss occurs in the system. Any time you open the breaker on the EAB equipment, you can hear the system's solenoids initiate a penalty application, and open the power cutoff.

Granted, this piece of creative fiction still got the technical stuff wrong. Unless you have a kicker, train air brakes do not go into emergency for any sort of penalty brake application ... they reduce the equalizing reservoir to zero at a service rate. I don't care if it's a brake system power loss, alerter timeout, failure to acknowledge a cab signal, or LSL overspeed. All of them drop the air at a service rate ... not by an emergency application.

As for the stopping distances, I agree that it's just absurd.

I too suspect the person knows something about the equipment, but not enough to hold any credibility.

From the OP:

"Approaching a bend near milepost cmg 42 in an area referred to as the wild kingdom, for the many different types of animals spotted there, my conductor and I saw lights coming from around the way. This ordinarily means another train is coming and will pass on the other track. The outlay of the area is this, the river, #1 track, #2 track and a straight up mountainside, carved out for the laying of these tracks. I killed our lights as not to blind the oncoming crew."

It's common procedure to turn your light OFF in the middle of the night, on a MOVING train, to not blind hte on-coming crew? Do BOTH crews do this, being nice, polite folk? This one line makes this whole thing unbelieveable to me.

BaltoJoey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I happened to come across this report of where a
> CSX locomotive hit a UFO near Paintsville, KY in
> Jan 2002. Does anyone remember hearing or seeing
> anything about this incident?
>
> Below is a copy of the report:
>
> Occurred : 1/14/2002 02:47 (Entered as : 01/14/02
> 2:47)
> Reported: 4/3/2006 11:51:27 AM 11:51
> Posted: 5/15/2006
> Location: Paintsville, KY
> Shape: Disk
> Duration:15 minutes
> Train Collision
>
> At exactly 2:47 a.m. on Jan. 14 02, while working
> a coal train enroute from Russell Kentucky to
> Shelbiana Kentucky, our trailing unit and first
> two cars were severely damaged as we struck an
> unknown floating or hovering object. I know it was
> 2:47 because my watch froze, and to this day shows
> that time. Along with my watch the entire
> electrical systems on both locomotives went
> haywire.
>
> Approaching a bend near milepost cmg 42 in an area
> referred to as the wild kingdom, for the many
> different types of animals spotted there, my
> conductor and I saw lights coming from around the
> way. This ordinarily means another train is coming
> and will pass on the other track. The outlay of
> the area is this, the river, #1 track, #2 track
> and a straight up mountainside, carved out for the
> laying of these tracks. I killed our lights...

> BaltoJoey

I started off believing this until I read the line about "...killed our lights..." for the approaching train.Had the storyteller said "we dimmed our lights" he/she would have had me going until I realized "Duh...wouldn't the crew have known about any approaching traffic from DS?".

I'm not a disbeliever in the UFO phenomenon nor a believer but this story is just pure fiction,I think.

2472Don

2472Don Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I started off believing this until I read the line
> about "...killed our lights..." for the
> approaching train.Had the storyteller said "we
> dimmed our lights" he/she would have had me going
> until I realized "Duh...wouldn't the crew have
> known about any approaching traffic from DS?".

Unless you're on single track railroad, it's very common to NOT have the dispatcher tell you about any opposing traffic. In multiple track territory, there's no point for them to tell you unless you're doing something out of the ordinary, such as holding at a CP and crossing over to run around someone.

I also take no issue with the "kill the lights" line. Dimming the lights for opposing trains at night is commonplace, and the term "kill" is commonly used by crews in place of "dim" when referring to dimming them. Some crews will also shut the lights off completely as they pass another train, in addition to dimming them as they approach each other.

My guess is that shutting them completely off is a carryover from timetable or train order operation days (pre-CTC OR DTC) before the use of radio was widespread, when you needed to see the opposing train's number boards in order to ID the right one before carrying out your following orders. Since the numberboards were often on either side of the headlights, shutting them off gives the opposing a crew a better view of the number boards. As newer guys were trained, they picked up the habit from the old timers ... not knowing why it was done. To this day, I still see a lot of guys do it ... particularly CSX crews.

It's not so much the terminology or basic practices I find a lack of credibility with. It's other more detailed items, that hint at the work likely being a piece of fiction.

bAnd, it took a mile and a half to two miles to stop 14000 tons from 30 mph in emergency???? Must have been about a 6% downgrade. [b/]

At least a 6% grade. 

And, it took a mile and a half to two miles to stop 14000 tons from 30 mph in emergency???? Must have been about a 6% downgrade. 

At least a 6% grade.