There deffinately isn't any humor to going on the ground as the event could be catastrophic if you happened to be the poor trainman on the ground at the point of the derailment or even the trainman riding the end of a car in a shove movement where a car derailed.There are many scenarios wich can cause injury and even death.The railroad is not a place of enjoyment as this kind of stuff does happen and will continue to happen,if your a railroader you don't want to see it happen period! I'm sure some people out there think this stuff is really neat to watch on "youtube" along with other pictures and such that get posted on the web.I've looked at a few and they are deffinately not enjoying,especially the pictures of the California Metrolink/UP head end wreck overwiew wich show the carnage and devestation wich were caused by the deceased engineer sending text messages on his cell phone.His body lay on the ground with a sheet over it next to his crushed locomotve.
I've got 17 years in on the NS and i'll tell you death can be around the corner at any moment.In my first year alone i had 4 instances where if i hadn't been paying attention i would be either dead or injured.I don't want to bore you with the details but will do so anyhow so that some of you may see how serious the nature of the job can be and how enjoyable it isn't.
Once while riding the end of a cut of cars,we were shoving thru a long crossover,"wich was properly lined" about midway thru the rail spread causing the lead truck to drop to the ground and derail giving me a big jolt.Luckily i was only about 4-5 cars away from the engineer and he could see me and as soon as i felt the wheels drop i swung him down immediately to stop.Another time we were switching cars,my conductor told me to go down one of the tracks and open up the knuckles on some cars that had butted knuckles and hadn't coupled.At the time he was kicking cars into some adjoining tracks and didn't tell me he was going to kick any in the track i was in! I just so happened to have one car that the darn cut lever wouldn't open the knuckle all the way and as i lifted the cut lever with my left hand i stuck my right hand in to open the knuckle.At that moment i heard a loud slam in my trackand the other end of the car i was trying to open the knuckle on started to move,i barely had time to yank my right hand out from the knuckle.If i hadn't done so i probably wouldn't have a right hand.Once while doubling up a couple tracks for our train i made a cut in the track and went to hop on the last car we were pulling out.I grabbed the grab iron as it started moving,"back when we could get on moving equip!" and went to put my foot in the bottom step and my foot slipped and i proceded to get drug in the ballast several car lengths before i was able to pull myself up.One other time we tied our engines down on a track next to live track wich was on a slight curve,as i got down with my grip i didn't see anything out of the corner of my eye and i went to step back and the next thing i knew there was a engine coming right at me on the next track.I barely got out of the way.You can have eyes in the back of your head and still not see or hear everything on the RR.
I've been a engineer for the past 15 1/2 years and it is never a dull moment on the RR.I've had 4 train/vehichle crossing accidents,luckily no one was killed in any of those,my last one 4 teenagers were hopping out at the last minute and we then drug the vehichle down the tracks were it proceeded to get caught in an adjoining switch,wich by that time our engine stopped and the vehichle then caught fire next to our fuel tank! I've had countless near misses on bridges,curves,ect.and one unforntunate suicide.Every one of those instances will make your ass quiver in the seat and your heart skip several beats along with remembering every little detail.Three weeks ago i derailed.In my case luckily it wasn't my fault and about midtrain in a 130 car empty train 3 cars decided to pick a switch and go down another track.In this case it was really odd as the train never went into emergency or parted.The 3 cars jacknifed a bit and went on the ground.I was only doing about 10 mph at the time and my air pressure on the rear dropped down to about 75 and the air flow went up slightly.i felt something wasn't right and stopped.As it was 3 cars derailed and it messed up the track a bit and also delayed all traffic for 7 hours.
Guess who the RR automatically wants to blame first in these so called enjoyable derailments! You get all sorts of attention and fingers pointing when your the engineer at the throttle.You then get the NS interigation process,tapes pulled the whole 9 yards! If it had been my fault i would have had to go to the hospital pee in a bottle,then get pulled out of service,have an investigation a few weeks later,then get fired! Again nothing enjoyable about going on the ground!
I get more enjoyment out of reading some of the darn stuff posted on some of these forums!
