[UnderseaLcpl]

Lucky guy. You'd think a trainspotter would understand the concept of double-track.

I have never understood the complete and utter disregard that people often demonstrate for their own safety when they are near railroad tracks. It just doesn't make any sense. Children play on railroad tracks, but they rarely play on the freeway (for long). Pedestrians generally look both ways before crossing the street and drivers usually stop at stop signs and red lights, but nobody ever pays any attention at the railroad crossings. How many times have you guys seen a car or truck parked across the tracks while waiting for a light to turn?

In the comparitively short time that I have been a railroad employee, I've even seen a case where a woman drove straight into the side of a moving train! How does a person who is not suicidal even manage to do that!? It's isn't like we paint the things in camoflauge! And even if we did, it'd be pretty hard to miss a 4,500-foot long 20-foot tall 150,000-ton wall of steel that literally shakes the earth when it moves, and blows a horn with around the same decibel level of a jumbo-jet's engine three times every time it approaches a crossing, and occassionally when passing motorists request it.

To add insult to injury, people who are hit by trains (or their next of kin) often sue the railroad for damages. Sometimes they have a "legitimate" claim... when signals malfunction or fatigued engineers and other crewmen simply don't see them, not that they could do anything about it, anyway. I fail to see how being hit by a train is any better a reason for compensation than being "hit" by a gigantic wall on someone else's property that has stadium lights and air-raid sirens on it, but the tort lawyers have figured out how to use FRA rules technicalities to make suits so expensive that we usually just settle. Even with the footage from the cab cameras we've installed, we still can't seem to construct a cost-effective defense in court. The whole situation is madness. Or possibly Sparta.