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Dont play on train tracks, for everyone's sake.

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Reanimatoin

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I'm going to go on a long rant about something that happened today so bare with me.

I drive trains for a living. 99% of the time I get from A to B without any issue, I know what I'm doing.

Today pissed me off like no other has.

I mentioned the other day to a few people about my colleague who had someone suicide by his train the other day (news article here). That was nearly me today!

I was driving along at about 60mph with a fucking heavy train attached. And up in the distance I see two fucking dumbass fucking kids playing on the motherfucking track!

So I do what I'm taught to do, I brake and sound the horn as long as I possibly can.

These two little pricks hear this and fucking run!

So I come to a stop, call the BTP (British Transport Police) and report it. And then about 40m from where I stop, I see what these little cunts were up to.

They were laying ballast (fist sized rocks) on the track! 10 on either rail, spaced apart so that if I ran over them, I would fucking feel it.

2 things could have happened here, I could have derailed, causing damage to the engine, the wagons, the environment and it could have seriously injured or even fucking killed me. Or, I could have ran over the rocks, firing them out from under the wheels and causing damage elsewhere.

But like I said, I stopped and cleared it before continuing. But still, what if I'd have hit those fucking kids? What if I'd not seen the rocks?

Like I said, I contacted the BTP (British Transport Police) and reported them, but I doubt anything will come of it, they didn't exactly stick around.

Its just weird to think, if I hadn't reacted properly, I could have killed 2 people or ended up dead myself.

It annoys me that in this day and age that people still think it's acceptable to mess around on rail lines. It can cause some serious damage, to property, to people physically and especially to people mentally. Acts like this need to be stamped out.
 
Shit sucks OP. Kids can be dumb as fuck. Sounds like a cool job though. I've always had a fascination with heavy machinery like trains.
 
I've always wondered what driving a train is like. Is it just speeding up and slowing down?

Can you just hang out watching shit on a tablet?
 
my grandmother lived right next to a track and we used to put coins on the rails to see how squished they would get until one day as we were watching a penny we flying out and almost beaned my brother in the head and got lodged in her siding. never again.
 
gdt said:
I've always wondered what driving a train is like. Is it just speeding up and slowing down?
Click to expand...

To simplify it down to its basic components, yes.

But that's not easy to do when you have a train 1/3 of a mile long weighing over 2000 tonnes filled with highly explosive gas.

I could explain further if people wanted me to.

gdt said:
Can you just hang out watching shit on a tablet?
Click to expand...

Absolutely not! If I did that, a serious accident would have occurred today.
 
I must admit, I grew up in a tiny town a long the railroad tracks and we spent most of our time playing around them (lots of wooded area around the tracks and culverts going under them). On rare occasions we would do really dumb stuff like put things on the tracks (dumbest thing, I can remember is a bicycle, mostly just rocks and coins). We also used to throw rocks at train cars (not the engine or passenger trains, mostly coal cars) because it caused sparks and sounded cool. Some kids in our town figured out how to do something to the tracks to make the crossing guards go down whenever they wanted to and we would hold on to them and try to ride them up.

We were like a pack of little terrors. Surprised we never got chewed out or in trouble at all really.
 
gdt said:
I've always wondered what driving a train is like. Is it just speeding up and slowing down?

Can you just hang out watching shit on a tablet?
Click to expand...
Pretty sure there were lots of train sims on Dreamcast if you fancy giving it a go :)


Edit: or pc it seems
 
Glad you're okay OP. That's some twisted evil shit those kids were doing. I can't honestly imagine those kids didn't know they could potentially derail the train.
 
freenudemacusers said:
my grandmother lived right next to a track and we used to put coins on the rails to see how squished they would get until one day as we were watching a penny we flying out and almost beaned my brother in the head and got lodged in her siding. never again.
Click to expand...

I used to do the same at my grandmother's house when I was a kid as the house was right next to a track as well until we learned never to mess with it.
 
When I worked at a restaurant, the girl who delivered us coffee didn't show up and we found out tried to jump on a moving train when she and her boyfriend were drunk downtown and it took out her legs. I also went to school with someone who just died from a train at Coachella. People... Don't fuck with trains
 
Last month I was on a train that had to stop for an hour because some fucks threw rocks at it from a bridge. Like, big ones.
One of the train guys told me this happens sometimes, and worse. Like some people sometimes fired rifles at trains for fun. Lead bullets, but still.

That and of course people committing suicide on the tracks but that's another matter. One managed to fuck up the train engine with his body, we got stuck for 6 hours waiting for repairs.
 
A 17 year old girl recently died in my area as she and friends were walking along train tracks. She was a model student too apparently, which just goes to show that kids of all types can forget or ignore how dangerous it is.
 
markofhavoc said:
When I worked at a restaurant, the girl who delivered us coffee didn't show up and we found out tried to jump on a moving train when she and her boyfriend were drunk downtown and it took out her legs. I also went to school with someone who just died from a train at Coachella. People... Don't fuck with trains
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I'm sorry to hear that.

One thing that people don't realise is that it's not only the person being injured who is the victim.

My driver colleague who had a guy suicide on him is currently on indefinite sick leave until he gets cleared by a psychiatrist that he is fit for duty.

This stuff can instantly ruin a driver's career if they aren't mentally able to cope with it.
 
We need that famous conductor owning a douchebag gif that caused a major argument on GAF.

OP, I'm glad things worked out okay.
 
My brother-in-law's grandpa told me a story once...he was a kid in the 40's in a coal town in Utah. Every few hours a big ass train would come chugging up the canyon to the coal mine to get its load of coal. He had grown up hearing other kids make jokes about "greasing the line," meaning putting a shit ton of axle grease on the rails.

So one day he tried it. He took a jar of axle grease and greased up a long portion of each rail, then hid in some bushes to watch what happened. Sure enough, the coal train came around the bend, chugging up the hill through the canyon with an engine in the front and an engine in the back. When the front engine hit the greased section of the track, its wheels began to spin and the train came to a stop, then started sliding backward a bit. The conductor in the front and the conductor in the back were yelling back and forth trying to coordinate their efforts to get the train moving again. Finally, the guy in the front got out and checked the line and my BIL's grandpa heard him yell "SOME LITTLE FUCKER!"

He hid there in the bushes for a good hour and a half while they worked to clean up the grease and put sand down on the rail or something like that. As soon as the train finally got going again, he ran all the way home and hid under his bed.

And that's my train story today.
 
face-kick-by-train-conductor-o.gif


People who fuck around on train tracks are insane AND insanely stupid.
 
A good family friend recently quit train conducting after his 10th death, he ran over a 10th person and just didn't show up to work the next day. He had enough of people being dumb and thinking a train can stop like in the movies and dying because of it.

A week before he took me and others to safety training about trains at the rail yard and walked out a small training room while we watched videos of people getting hit by trains.

So yes, stop playing on the tracks. A train cannot stop like a car can and all the conductor can do is blow his/her horn, apply the brakes, watch, and hope the people on the tracks move out the way. I can only imagine what goes through the conductor's head.
 
The woods and the tracks is where you would find me as a kid. Coins and rocks on the tracks all the time. I apologize. I was no older than 10.
 
Driving trains sounds cool - I love trains.

Shame about what happened but its good everyone ended up ok. Hopefully those kids don't do it again/hopefully get caught.
 
I always wonder what it must be like for drivers in Japan where suicide by train is fairly common, especially on certain lines.
 
TheJLC said:
A good family friend recently quit train conducting after his 10th death, he ran over a 10th person and just didn't show up to work the next day. He had enough of people being dumb and thinking a train can stop like in the movies and dying because of it.
Click to expand...

10th?!?!?!?

Holy shit! That dude has some mental fortress to be able to withstand that!

I'm freaked out over the thought of 'nearly' hitting someone, never mind fucking 10!

I hope he's Ok, I really do feel sorry for him.
 
Saw a guy jump in front of a train once right in front of me at the start of the platform. Literally tore him to pieces. Those things are no joke. Shitty way to kill yourself too, you can really mess people up doing that.
 
Reanimatoin said:
10th?!?!?!?

Holy shit! That dude has some mental fortress to be able to withstand that!

I'm freaked out over the thought of 'nearly' hitting someone, never mind fucking 10!

I hope he's Ok, I really do feel sorry for him.
Click to expand...

During the training he told us some coworkers have like 17 and they are still on the job. I didn't know it was his 10th until I spoke to a co-worker of his.
 
Some kids are just so bored and unaware of the consequences/think there invincible they just do it for no reason.

Surprised me and my friends never did stuff like this as we were dumb fucking kids with a rail line near us, but I remember going on a school trip which was all about train safety and all these horror stories about people dying on tracks and stuff and they were pretty gruesome for an 8 year old to watch so I guess that helped build awareness.

Glad nothing happened though OP, can't imagine some of the shit other train drivers have seen.
 
grumble said:
Saw a guy jump in front of a train once right in front of me at the start of the platform. Literally tore him to pieces. Those things are no joke. Shitty way to kill yourself too, you can really mess people up doing that.
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Not to mention fucking up the evening commute home for tens of thousands of people.
 
grumble said:
Saw a guy jump in front of a train once right in front of me at the start of the platform. Literally tore him to pieces. Those things are no joke. Shitty way to kill yourself too, you can really mess people up doing that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've heard some real horror stories.

I really hope it never happens to me or anyone else.
 
That sucks. Do they have dash-cams (or whatever they'd be called on a train) equipped to help identify people who do this?
 
PrawnyNZ said:
That sucks. Do they have dash-cams (or whatever they'd be called on a train) equipped to help identify people who do this?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not on my trains.

The best I could do is give a description to the BTP, but it's hard to describe someone running away from you other than their clothes and height.
 
Reanimatoin said:
Unfortunately not on my trains.

The best I could do is give a description to the BTP, but it's hard to describe someone running away from you other than their clothes and height.
Click to expand...

You should go ask the higher ups if they will let you guys get some for the specific trains on problematic routes with this sort of issues.

These days lots of affordable solutions which should make the proposal easier.
 
Had a kid at my HS get killed by a train, he was riding his 4-wheeler down the tracks with his headphones on. Never heard it coming from behind.

I played little league with him and once he caught for me for 3 innings without wearing a catcher's mask. Nobody noticed until the 3rd when an umpire caught on.

Edit: The sad part is our school was RIGHT near some busy tracks and lots of kids would walk to school. There would inevitably be stalled/stopped trains some mornings and kids on the opposite side of the tracks who were stuck would climb UNDER the train to get to school. We would have assemblies like twice a year to talk about train safety and that poor kid never learned anything I guess.
 
Allforce said:
Had a kid at my HS get killed by a train, he was riding his 4-wheeler down the tracks with his headphones on. Never heard it coming from behind.
Click to expand...

One thing that a lot of people dont realise is, trains are fucking QUIET at times.

You might not hear an engine until its about 50 meters away.

It's a good job the horn is loud as fuck though.
 
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