That's all sorts of fucked up, my dad was an Engineer for the Penn Central / Conrail / Norfolk Southern railroads for most of his 40-something years (the rest was as a conductor) so I've heard all sorts of horror stories like this (and worse).
Edit: Sorry for the long post, everybody.
OP is in the UK so I can't say what the regulations are over there, but in the US you have to constantly keep watch for crossings, signals, obstructions and shit like the OP's talking about. There's also a deadman switch you have to hit at regular intervals or the train goes into emergency. The railroad company my dad worked for also liked to "banner test", where they'd go out in the field, lay a banner across the track that read "obstruction" and if the train touched it everyone involved was sacked. So you couldn't really take your eyes off the tracks for long.
That said, there were lots of times where he'd get put into a siding or have to wait in line to get into the yard and he'd be sitting in the middle of nowhere for hours at a time. He wasn't technically supposed to have any electronic devices, but some guys always had little handheld TVs or casino games. My dad racked up a lot of hours of Harvest Moon on his Gameboy SP.
This, this, a thousand times this. If there's one thing to take away from this thread, it's that the guys on the train have to live with the aftermath of stupid shit like this. By the time you see something just ahead, it's generally too late to stop it from happening and those guys on the train, even if they do everything right and in their power to stop it, still have to watch it happen. Or they hit something suddenly and it's a mile or two before the train comes to a full stop, and they're always the first ones on the scene. My father actually changed assignments so he could avoid working the route where he'd killed two kids who'd tried to beat the train at a crossing.
The worst is when lawyers get involved and keep dredging this crap up for decades trying to get a settlement out of the railroad for their own stupidity (in this case, the family argued that the remote, rural crossing should have had crossing arms instead of just lights).
I can't speak for all engineers on all rail lines, but it was rough for my dad and our family growing up. He was essentially on-call 24/7 and could be called up to leave at all hours of the day or night. Though he was legally required to be off 8 hours, they could call him after only 6 with a two hour window to get ready. Getting home in the middle of the night and having to leave early the next morning was bad enough, but if he got home in the middle of the day we still wouldn't really see him because he'd be sleeping, having been up for 10-12 hours. There was never any assurance he'd be home for major holidays (in general, they tried to get everyone home but it didn't always work out) and birthdays and such were a complete wash. Making any kind of plans was impossible unless he requested specific time off, so we couldn't just go to the movies or anything like that.
Because of his assignment, he would be on the road for 10-12 hours, then they'd put him up at a nasty ass hotel at the away terminal where he'd eat (usually Chinese takeout or fast food, it was not a health lifestyle) and sleep until he was called in again, then 10-12 hours back home. Sometimes he'd be sitting at the away terminal for days waiting for an eastbound train to get him home. Some of the locomotives didn't have A/C or heat either, and the facilities could be little more than a bucket on some of them.
That's not to say it was all bad, and he speaks well of the job and offered to get my brothers and I jobs there. The pay was good, the benefits were great and his retirement is incredible. The trains do go through some beautiful, isolated areas, even in the rust belt where he worked, and since he was a professional photographer earlier in life he has a lot of great pictures (and some really awesome ones of graffiti, I always told him he should try to get them published). But his health suffered (lots of sitting, lack of sleep, bad diet, damn near everyone was a heavy smoker) and he wasn't home a lot and that lead to all sorts of family issues I won't get into (though I will note that he got away from those issues because of the job too).
Spoilers are for gore; my father once told me about a co-worker (who later committed suicide because of this incident) who had hit someone trying to kill themselves. The guy basically
Also, in case it comes up; people who lay down on the tracks do NOT die quickly, they
.
Edit: Sorry for the long post, everybody.
OP is in the UK so I can't say what the regulations are over there, but in the US you have to constantly keep watch for crossings, signals, obstructions and shit like the OP's talking about. There's also a deadman switch you have to hit at regular intervals or the train goes into emergency. The railroad company my dad worked for also liked to "banner test", where they'd go out in the field, lay a banner across the track that read "obstruction" and if the train touched it everyone involved was sacked. So you couldn't really take your eyes off the tracks for long.
That said, there were lots of times where he'd get put into a siding or have to wait in line to get into the yard and he'd be sitting in the middle of nowhere for hours at a time. He wasn't technically supposed to have any electronic devices, but some guys always had little handheld TVs or casino games. My dad racked up a lot of hours of Harvest Moon on his Gameboy SP.
This, this, a thousand times this. If there's one thing to take away from this thread, it's that the guys on the train have to live with the aftermath of stupid shit like this. By the time you see something just ahead, it's generally too late to stop it from happening and those guys on the train, even if they do everything right and in their power to stop it, still have to watch it happen. Or they hit something suddenly and it's a mile or two before the train comes to a full stop, and they're always the first ones on the scene. My father actually changed assignments so he could avoid working the route where he'd killed two kids who'd tried to beat the train at a crossing.
The worst is when lawyers get involved and keep dredging this crap up for decades trying to get a settlement out of the railroad for their own stupidity (in this case, the family argued that the remote, rural crossing should have had crossing arms instead of just lights).
I can't speak for all engineers on all rail lines, but it was rough for my dad and our family growing up. He was essentially on-call 24/7 and could be called up to leave at all hours of the day or night. Though he was legally required to be off 8 hours, they could call him after only 6 with a two hour window to get ready. Getting home in the middle of the night and having to leave early the next morning was bad enough, but if he got home in the middle of the day we still wouldn't really see him because he'd be sleeping, having been up for 10-12 hours. There was never any assurance he'd be home for major holidays (in general, they tried to get everyone home but it didn't always work out) and birthdays and such were a complete wash. Making any kind of plans was impossible unless he requested specific time off, so we couldn't just go to the movies or anything like that.
Because of his assignment, he would be on the road for 10-12 hours, then they'd put him up at a nasty ass hotel at the away terminal where he'd eat (usually Chinese takeout or fast food, it was not a health lifestyle) and sleep until he was called in again, then 10-12 hours back home. Sometimes he'd be sitting at the away terminal for days waiting for an eastbound train to get him home. Some of the locomotives didn't have A/C or heat either, and the facilities could be little more than a bucket on some of them.
That's not to say it was all bad, and he speaks well of the job and offered to get my brothers and I jobs there. The pay was good, the benefits were great and his retirement is incredible. The trains do go through some beautiful, isolated areas, even in the rust belt where he worked, and since he was a professional photographer earlier in life he has a lot of great pictures (and some really awesome ones of graffiti, I always told him he should try to get them published). But his health suffered (lots of sitting, lack of sleep, bad diet, damn near everyone was a heavy smoker) and he wasn't home a lot and that lead to all sorts of family issues I won't get into (though I will note that he got away from those issues because of the job too).
Spoilers are for gore; my father once told me about a co-worker (who later committed suicide because of this incident) who had hit someone trying to kill themselves. The guy basically
stood in the middle of the track, got down into a 'linebacker' stance with his head and back aligned and waited for the train to hit him. The force of the impact drove his head and spine out of his body.
Also, in case it comes up; people who lay down on the tracks do NOT die quickly, they
get caught by the front (it's called a cow-catcher) and dragged along for miles and sometimes are still alive at the end. The clearance on those things isn't nearly as high as people think it is.
