Quote:
Originally Posted by Bwana
I have a cousin that recently retired, who was a train engineer for Amtrak for decades. His route skirted Glacier National Park, up through northern Idaho and onto Seattle. He has some pretty wild stories after all the time. Hitting boulders, moose, bears, cows, you name it. He had some close calls with vehicles and humans along the tracks as well, but got lucky there. The worst thing he had to deal with, was the boulders, according to him. He said if you hit a big one, it will derail an engine in a heartbeat.
|
I rode a commuter train into Chicago for 20 years. There were generally three or more pedestrian fatalities per year on the line I used, the vast majority of them suicides. It's certainly an effective method - there's no coming back from getting blasted by a train going 70 mph. While I was fortunate to never actually see an impact, I've seen the aftermath more times than care to remember. But as bad as that was, seeing the looks on the faces of the conductors/engineers who witnessed people exploding like giant bugs on a windshield right in front of them, and hearing the pain in their voices, was even worse. That shit extracts a heavy toll.