He was obviously close to the tracks, and visibility was poor.
Actually he though he was a safe distance away....I think the final determination was that he was struck by a piece of banding that came off a flatbed load traveling at 50 MPH
I've had flagmen similar to detail cops, who just sat in their vehicles and napped.
So have I.?ÿ
I walk off the site, call my client and the railroad, and explain that I'm not going to work until they do their part to ensure my safety.?ÿ?ÿ
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Sure, if it's a dangerous situation. Maybe not you, but I've had to secure a detail for short dead-end streets with no houses. So the lack of police protection didn't really matter. Well, except that we were in Mattapan.
Have worked without incident in the RR ROW probably a few hundred times over the decades.?ÿ On one occasion the client called the railroad in advance to ask questions and they hit him with all of the BS they wanted to enforce so we had a "watchdog" snoozing in his pickup setting on the rails.
I also have my own private railroad crossing on one farm.?ÿ Two other farms are bounded on one side by the railroad.?ÿ Live a quarter mile from a track with 15 to 20 trains per day.?ÿ Have a nice collection of "waste" materials.?ÿ I also routinely gain garbage on my side of the fence such as plastic pop bottles, juice bottles, grocery bags, cardboard from various food items, etc. that have been "donated" by RR workers.
Along one stretch of nearly one mile there is a sidetrack.?ÿ From time to time some problem occurs with a train car so they leave it on the sidetrack for a crew to make repairs then add it to some later train passing by.?ÿ One year, about a week prior to Christmas, this happened and I had a loaded coal car setting about 100 feet from my crossing.?ÿ If bad little boys get a lump of coal in their stockings for Christmas, how bad do you have to be to deserve an entire train car load of coal for Christmas?
To address the OPs misconception about tree growth: the only part of the tree that grows upwards, is the meristem tissue at the tip of the trunk. Similarly, tree branches only grow outwards from the meristem tissue at the branch tips. You never see a rope swing "move" further away from the tree trunk over the years, and barb wire nailed to the tree does not move upwards.
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https://agrilife.org/treecarekit/introduction-to-tree-care/how-trees-grow/
Then someone at a RR crossing could just as easily been killed by that. Not necessarily an issue of needing flagman protection, then.
45 or so years ago we were doing a boundary survey on property where a double track was located, one a passing track.?ÿ This was one of the first jobs that we had ever an EDM.?ÿ I was the instrument man and we were leapfrogging tripods so each of us was staying at a tripod.?ÿ The crew chief yelled that a train was coming so I picked up and moved between the tracks.?ÿ Unheard by me the rodman had ALSO yelled that a train was coming.?ÿ When I looked back I was caught between the trains going in opposite directions.?ÿ I KNOW there is enough room between the tacks for two trains to pass but I felt like they were only inches apart.?ÿ From then on I was constantly looking in both directions.?ÿ There was also a tunnel on that line which made it even more exciting.
Andy
I would have been hugging the rock fill between the tracks and praying to anyone who would listen. Would have needed a new set of pants, too. The coal trains here are about 135 cars plus two or three engines. They now have what I call double trains that are effectively two trains hooked together so that you have a couple of engines in the lead, then about 100-150 cars, followed by another engine, then another 100-150 cars with an engine or two pushing from behind. They take FOREVER to go by you even when they are at full speed.
Have had a train set on the sidetrack blocking my crossing for up to two weeks. Try pushing bags of feed and square bales of hay across beneath a train car, then pack them one by one to the feeding area. On extremely cold days toss in an axe so you can stroll a quarter mile to the pond to chop ice so the cattle can drink. I realize a Georgia farm boy would not understand that last sentence. ???? ????
@holy-cow Yeah, I probably needed to clean out my pants after that. Being young and dumb can get you into some situations that you later look back on and laugh. But not right away.
Good info in the How Trees Grow paper! The railroad spikes I'm concerned with were set in trees only because there weren't any concrete structures or other stable objects in the vicinity.
It's a good idea to not stop too close to a railroad crossing. Back around 1984, I had been at my motorcycle dealer in Somerville, MA and was riding into Cambridge. I was on the little, old, winding urban streets near the town line, where there was a railroad crossing. Cruddy, old track, and the crossing probably had only lights, no gates; can't quite remember after all these years. The crossing lights came on ahead of me, and I stopped, straddling my motorcycle, up nice and close to the crossing. I was at the head of the line, as a few cars came along and stopped behind me. The locomotive went through the crossing, pulling a local, mixed freight. The train was moving slowly, as you'd expect in an area like that, probably about 10 mph.
After several freight cars had gone by, I looked to my left and saw something strange. It looked like the ground alongside the track was boiling. In a few seconds, I realized that the rear truck of a boxcar was dragging a long length of pipe, maybe 15 or 20 feet long and several inches in diameter. That truck was partially derailed, and doing a number on the track's ballast if I recall correctly. The pipe was sticking out sideways, and the outer end of it was embedded in the ground, cutting a ditch as the train moved along. It was like a slow-motion scene from a disaster movie. That pipe was like a monstrous plow, slowly and steadily ripping up whatever was in its path.
I turned the handlebar hard and back-pedaled my motorcycle, getting parallel with the front bumper of the car behind me. The boxcar and pipe came into the crossing, and the pipe tore right through the road's pavement. At that point, the train crew somehow got a clue about what was going on and quickly applied the brakes. The train stopped with the boxcar and pipe still partly in the crossing. I completed my about-turn and found an alternate route.
To this day I'm still curious about how that pipe could have become stuck on that boxcar's rear truck. Had it been lying across the track? And got stuck on that boxcar's truck after the locomotive and the lead cars had already passed over it? And the train crew hadn't seen it on the track? Or, some miscreants affixed the pipe to the boxcar's truck while the train had been sitting in a yard?
The problem with hydrants is that they do on rare occasions get replaced and the new ones look just like the old ones and so your crew will not know that it is a different hydrant. Had that happen once and haven't used a hydrant since.
I use trees or a nail and washer in the pavement.