Some of you got a bit worked up over the guys shooting a video a bit close to the tracks yesterday. So here’s a chance to keep the party going . Someone (rightfully) asked about what that has to do with cars. Not a whole lot, but part of CC is just documenting anything of interest that we encounter on our walks, especially if it’s transportation oriented. I didn’t have access to these shots yesterday to post in the comments, so here they are, shot almost exactly in the same location, but facing the other direction. Yes, that’s the UP mainline track. And yes, that’s a real live baby (toddler, to be more precise). And so what’s it doing there, hugging the well-polished track?
Pretty much the same thing as with the other Outtake: getting photographed. Train tracks make such a great background for photography!
While we’re at it, let’s clear out the rest of my “people on tracks” files. Now this one I can relate to a bit better, given that could so well be me in my younger days. I used to love “walking the rail”, seeing how far I could go without falling off. I still do it sometimes. Now these guys are “cheating”, but I don’t blame them. How better to celebrate a warm late-summer sunset, but to walk towards it holding hands with your sweetie on the rails?
Ugh.
I like to stand near – near – the tracks in Maine when the Amtrak Downeaster comes through. Unless you are really trying to pick the headlight out of the distance, you may not see it until it’s right on top of you. If your iBuds are in then you won’t hear it. Call me a wuss, and I have no problem with Paul posting them, but I hate all these pictures.
+1
Where’s the poor virginal damsel tied to the tracks with Snidely Whiplash cackling nearby? If you’re going to do railroad tracks, at least do the whole set.
You laugh. We had one of those incidents, too…it was a year before I hired on, but it happened. Two guys, one of them a transvestite, liked playing Snidely and Sweet Sue on the tracks. He’d tie the “girl” down, and then cut “her” free as the train was almost on top of them. Engineer would mess his pants; and then clean up as he called the cops.
About the third reported time…Snidely couldn’t get the ropes cut. Sweet Sue got sliced top and bottom; and that’s how we all know she was a he.
The reason, they figure, Snidely didn’t get the ropes cut in time, was that on that line trains ran at different speeds depending on their consist. Regular freight ran at 50; coal trains at 40; and TOFC or container stacks ran at 70. And without a radar gun, there’s no way someone standing on the tracks ahead can tell.
“That baby corners like its on rails.”
I live near tracks that are only used a couple of weeks a year when a transportation museum runs a passenger line to and from the State Fair. Otherwise, the tracks see no use at all. These are quite shiny, so they plainly get used regularly.
THAT BABY IS TOKYO DRIFTING EVERYWHERE!!!
Incredibly O/T poll: which of these was a worse/more ridiculous movie franchise??
Original “Baby Geniuses” better than original “Look Who’s Talking”. Franchise? They both stink on ice… 🙁
What?! There was an Icecapades version?!?
(Kidding! I know what you meant, and agree 😉 )
Everybody is looking at the toddler. Nobody even looking for a train.
The Silver Meteor from New York to Miami runs through my neighborhood, as well as the Autotrain from Washington. If those fools placed that infant on the Seaboard tracks, they’d never gather him up in time.
I have a sense you put out by the criticisms of the photo?
See where this kind of madness can lead:
El Susto was great! More kick the baby!
Seeing that baby on the rails makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. They might as well put him in the middle of an infrequently used road. At least a car might have a chance at swerving out of the way.
Thinning the herd.
Bingo
One thing to consider is that trains are very speed restricted through town in Eugene, and are required to sound their horns frequently ( too frequently IMO).
Yeah, not to justify stupidity, but there’s an intersection 50 feet behind them. They’d have plenty of warning from the whistle and the crossing bells.
Any number of things could happen, A rolling car could come across there…sent down a hill by a vandal. A train could be making a switch move or reverse move; a man on the last car but no horn or bell. He might not see the baby; or it might be his radio fails at just that moment. Unlikely? Life is full of bizarro coincidences that prove fatal.
It could even be one of those new “Quiet Zone” crossings where no horn or bell is used. Just to walk up to the tracks…YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW.
There are risks, sure. There are also risks walking down the sidewalk.
Walking down a sidewalk isn’t trespassing. Those a$$hats have no business on the tracks, period.
Most rail lines where I live are electrified (third rail) so that would be a well done baby if those pictures were taken here – and if he didn’t get cooked, he’d get splattered since trains come through every 5 minutes or so… more than that, even, on the busier lines!
These look like photos of potential Darwin award candidates…thinning the herd.
This prompts a true story. Lots can be learned from the dumb actions of others.
The town where I grew up is on the Mississippi River and contained the only railroad bridge over the river between St. Louis and Memphis. It carried a fair amount of train traffic.
When I was young and stupid, around 12 to 15 years old, there were a few times I played with friends on the end of the bridge – throwing rocks, catching the amazing view from there.
By no means am I defending anyone doing as I did, or as the people pictured are doing, but trains aren’t quiet. You can hear them coming in plenty of time if you pay attention. Yet there was the one time…
We were a bit too far on the bridge when we heard the train approach. We knew of the platform beneath the tracks, so we climbed the ladder mounted on the side and climbed down onto the concrete platform below.
Have you ever experienced having a train directly above your head? Where you can see shit bouncing around, see the sparks, and hear everything? Let’s just say that was the last time I was on the bridge.
Another story about the bridge. There were as ongoing bet amongst some in town about who could ride a moped across to the Missouri side (I grew up in Illinois) and make it back before a train came along. If you timed it right, it was no big hoopie as UP was pretty regular.
One last story: I had a great uncle that was very persuasive. During WWII he somehow convinced several people in town that Hitler had a secret army in Southeast Missouri and was going to invade Illinois via this bridge. There were volunteer guards there for about a week.
So not only did I play on the tracks, I played on the RR bridge where there was nowhere to go. I never said this was wise.
Oh, and here’s a picture of the bridge for perspective…
Again, it wasn’t the smartest thing one could do.
Wow. Jason’s story and the swing bridge pic below from Mike George remind me of two railroad bridge experiences.
In the early ’70’s my friends and I liked to take long bike hikes from our north St. Louis County suburb to various points, frequently across the Mississippi River to Illinois. Pedaling your 10 speed across a busy, narrow 2 lane auto bridge nearly a mile long was hard on nerves and body, so occasionally we would take the RR bridge from St. Charles County, MO to Alton, IL. We would ride on the 6 foot wide plank maintenance walkway, an outrigger at track level for the entire bridge length.
Once we were on the bridge when a train came, and although we could see it coming the bridge was too long for us to get off before the train arrived. Thankfully we were on that narrow maintenance walkway with a pipe railing to grip, but I can second Jason’s experience that a train passing with a few feet of you is not to be forgotten and hopefully not repeated.
Another time we made it most of the way across when the swing bridge end opened to let a tall river boat through Lock 23. So it was back 3/4 mile on the bridge to Missouri – we did not make it to Illinois that day.
Fortunately age 16 and drivers licences came not too long after that, so 10 speeds were dropped in favor of ratty muscle cars. Lonely US 63 through flood prone St. Charles County to Alton, IL became a favorite venue for late night speed runs – but that is another story.
That story just dredged up a childhood memory. My grandma was friends with an old couple from her church, and we all had lunch at their house one Sunday afternoon. The husband told us a story about his old job manning the switch-house for the railroad bridge adjacent to the McCullough Bridge in North Bend, Oregon, as seen in the pic. The train bridge stays in open position by default until a train comes in and it connects. One night a junky walked all the way (at least half a mile) and waited til the bridge connected for an upcoming train and stormed into the switch house and robbed him at gun point.
My Mother tells the story of my Grandfather, who for a short time worked on the railroads (in the twenties or thirties)…as an immigrant the jobs back then were frightening, one time working on a trestle when a train approached, they took their tools, hung them from their belts, and hung on to the ties while the train went overhead, and when it was clear they had to pull themselves back up and resume working (not sure if they got docked for their “hang time”)…one of his coworkers fell to his death, and my Grandfather quit that job soon after, went back to working in the coal mines. At least he was able to make it to age 66 when he died of black lung instead of dying as a younger man in an “accident”..
“…but trains aren’t quiet.”
Passenger trains can be. Slow freights might shake the ground well in advance of arriving, but a four- or five-car passenger train doing 60+ can sneak up on you.
When there’s two tracks, as in the picture, you watch the one you managed to hear going by, never hearing the one approaching from behind you, while standing on the other track.
There were freight trains only on this line combined with the town I grew up in having a population of 450. But you are correct about the quiet passenger trains.
I grew up in Winnipeg – at the time all trains going across Canada passed through there.
You learned very quickly to keep a respectful distance hiding in the ditch when that thunder came rolling by.
Ha, Great. As kids 10 or 12 we would walk down to the bay for something to do. Along the bay passed the RR tracks. We would put a penny on the tracks when the train came to see how flat it would get. We would “hide” twenty feet away. Don’t get me wrong, we had total respect for the train.
OH MY *****NG GOODNESS!! Did you call the police on any of these idiots?
Love to be original but I can’t. I still just see lobotomy scars all over the place. Yes I do have a couple of my own and I did live in a town with an active railroad but I never messed with the trains.
To the baby photo: All I can say is: Risk/benefits. If I really-really-really needed to get somewhere in a hurry, on foot, and there was that railroad trestle across the river…I’d probably walk it, depending on how dire the need. But to park my kid, or any kid, on tracks for a photo? Many things can go wrong. A train can come up…if there’s no crossings behind you, or if there’s background noise, you might not notice until it’s on top of you. Then you panic and then you trip rushing to the baby….
…and I’m up there; and I just ran over a kid. Was it a kid?…or was someone punking me, putting a doll on the tracks? I got three crossings blocked! Do I big-hole it? Call 9-1-1 on the cell?
My conductor is going to have to walk back to look at the bodies. He has to; otherwise someone will make a case of “callous disregard.”
True stats: I’ve killed two people (pedestrians) and hit one car (a glancing blow and he fled the scene). Friends have hit two tractor-trailers, about six cars, killed about six people, including one college couple making a porn video between the rails. Guy looked up and rolled off; his sweetie didn’t know what was happening and lay there a second too long. She was killed.
You might guess I don’t take railroad trespassers lightly.
Thank you for sharing this.
This is stupid and risky, sure, but not all that risky. Around here, there are so many crossings with horns being blown at all but one, that you would have to be totally out of it to not know a train was coming long before it got to wherever you were. I have watched trains at one particular place for about 30 years now, and have seen some really dumb things, like parents allowing little, and unbalanced, kids playing on the tracks. Only two real injuries have occurred, one was a little kid fell and somehow sliced his arm wide open, and another bozo high school kid ran on top of the rail and slipped and cracked his head open. His eye socket was trashed, and you could see his skull under his eyebrow. He was wide awake and very angry. His girlfriend was in a total panic. Two weeks later, he was back watching trains, and after he healed completely, he looked pretty good, He was missing a hunk of eyebrow though.
I can’t find a photo to illustrate this, but I once caught about 30 seconds of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”. It was enough to show me that the stars of the show, including the little girl, live in a house (trailer?) that appeared to be only a few yards from railway tracks… with no fencing or protection of any kind! The local children apparently play in their “yard” in close proximity to trains.
Only a matter of time before the show will need to change its title to “There Goes Honey Boo Boo.”
I grew up next to train tracks, they were right in our backyard. There were about 7 houses on my street, all but one of them had little kids, none of us were stupid enough to get hit by a train. Yes, we were on the tracks constantly. My mom was a worrier and I remember when I was about 7 asking her why she worried so much about the train tracks. She said, that trains were dangerous, etc, and I asked her, “Don’t you think I’m smart enough not to get hit by a train?”, she said she wasn’t worried about that, she was worried about me “getting my foot stuck”, or hitting my head. I never have figured out how you could get your foot stuck, but at least the hitting my head part made sense. Later on, her worrying mind would imagine me crushed dead under my truck if I didn’t call her. I didn’t have to jack my truck up to work under it, so like the foot getting caught in the train tracks, I didn’t know how that could happen.
The Seattle area is a good one for pedestrian/train interactions. There’s all that beautiful Puget Sound waterfront, especially from Seattle north, and the tracks go along the shore for a good part of that, with such things as parks and ferry landings. Also in the Green River valley around Kent and Auburn, two well-used railroad tracks there, both with bridges. It seems like we lose a couple of idiots every year.
An incident happened at the shipyard where I used to work. There was a string of flatcars on a siding in the back woods several miles south of town. Somehow – no one apparently ever found out exactly how – they got loose and started rolling downhill. By the time they blew through the shipyard fence they were doing about fifty, then hit a sharp curve and derailed into a parking lot. It was at a time when no one was around so there was only property damage. The recent similar incident in Quebec that caused quite a few deaths and a great deal of property damage was another reminder that trains and railroad tracks are not to be messed with.
When I was a kid, we used to play on the railroad tracks that ran behind my neighborhood and behind the adjacent town park. We got a lot of entertainment from leaving pennies on the tracks, then trying to find them after being flattened by the trains. We never put nickles on the tracks because one friend swore that they would derail the trains. I didn’t want to be the one to test that theory. We would always keep a lookout for the railroad police. I think they chased us off a couple times, but we usually saw them coming.
The railroad police were a joke here in Toledo, at least the C&O guy was. He would stop us and never recognize us. Never. Even just a week or so after he talked to us the last time. Once we were shooting off bottle rockets on the tracks, and he flies up in his car, and asks us our names, etc. We gave him the names and addresses of kids that lived in our neighborhoods, and he always swallowed what we told him. The one time he actually went to “our” houses, he went to a house down the street to report to “our” parents that we had been chased off the bridge about a half mail away. Of course, the kid there denied it totally, but his parents didn’t believe him. The kid whose name was used by my best friend got the crap beat out of him by his abusive dad. We had no idea until he told us about it. Nobody knew what a prick his dad was until then. About 10 years later, his youngest, last remaining at home, and by far biggest son, decided he wasn’t going to take another beating and worked dad over pretty good with dad’s own belt. The cops just shrugged their shoulders, and said, “Oh well, guess he got what he deserved”, and refused to really get involved. Soon after that, dad moved out, and mom filed for divorce.