Posted on 09/19/2009 4:39:51 AM PDT by kingattax
A woman trying to smash a penny on the tracks was hit by a train Thursday night.
Emergency crews rushed to the scene at River Road and Idaho Street in Sedamsville just after 8 p.m.
They say the woman in her 20s suffered a minor head injury and was walking around when crews arrived.
She was taken to the hospital for observation.
When the train was going by fast, did you ever have the feeling you were being drawn into it? I did and it was an eerie feeling. I don’t know if it was a pressure differential or psychological. Other kids said they experienced the same when up close to a speeding freight train.
When I was about 14 or 15 the group of hoodlum kids I used to run around with decided it would be a good idea to jump onto a moving train. There was a train that used to come through town on Saturday night about once a month carrying lumber for a lumberyard that was a couple of miles outside of town. We knew the train would stop to unload, so we thought it would be fun to jump on and ride a couple of miles, then get off when it stopped. Seven of us jumped on, but the train didn't stop until it got to Greenville, SC, about 130 miles away. One of my friends father came and got us. That was one LONG ride home.....
Standing on a low overpass at night, looking two miles up the railroad tracks and watching that locomotive headlight bear down on you at ninety miles an hour - that was spooky! And as it roared by underneath (usually with a last second blast from its air horns), the bow wave seemed like it would pull you off the overpass.
Most of the freight trains were moving too slowly to experience that but I did from time to time with the much faster moving passenger trains.
lol! Our trains didn’t stop either and fortunatley for us they seemed to never go faster than about 25mph. To this day I still don’t know how we survived such lunacy.
Bernoulli's principle. Train cars accelerate the nearby air, reducing air pressure near the train. You were indeed being drawn toward the train!
Fortunately she was hit in the head, which in her case apparently does not contain any vital organs.
trains suck.
I think the survival instinct of wanting to pull away is perceived by the psyche as somehow being pushed or drawn towards the danger.
This happened to a guy I worked with in Texas. He had been riding motorcyles for about six months when he went riding with some friends on country roads. They all went to pass a Ford Expedition as a high speed when he was sucked into the side of the car. I can’t imagine what the pain he felt as he lived for the next week before succumbing to his injuries.
It’s too bad many new riders (who often buy bikes that are too powerful for them) don’t understand the more important aspects of physics between two objects on the road.
Under certain circumstances trains seem to approach in silence. When I was 11, a girlfriend and I decided to take a shortcut home by walking across a short railroad bridge. I am as terrified of trains as I am delighted by them, and I was very sure to check carefully in every direction, both looking and listening, before we started across that bridge. we were halfway across when I saw a train coming at high speed. I swear, there was no sound. We could not hear a thing. No way we could outrun it, so we jumped up on the framework of the trestle. It was a bad moment. It wasn’t until it was right with us that we really heard the enormous noise.
I don’t know what this phenomenon is, but it probably explains how some people can get hit by trains when they’re not drunk.
Back in the late 50s I was driving through Nebraska one night and some idiot in the oncoming lane had only one headlight and it was on high beams. I kept flicking my lights but the jerk never replied. I worked myself up into a lather over this Dumbo and in the end was flicking my beams as fast as I could - TOTALLY pist.
Then the locomotive roared on by. I think it was on US 30, where the land is flat as a billiard table and the RR tracks parallel the straight-as-an-arrow road for MILES. Always get a kick remembering that, and suspect the engineer did too.
You aren't loosing your mind. It's called the Bernulli Effect. When something passes at great speed it is sucking air along with it leaving a low pressure around it. That's what you feel.
First always put your ear on the track...
You’ll end up with a stripe on the side of your face, but those railroad tracks are very good sound conductors. You’ll hear a train in the tracks long before you hear the actual sound.
See? I told you Rachel Corrie wasn’t dead! (But she is now!)
Never mind.
Me too....still got one of the flattened pennies from circa 1963 laying around somewhere.
Next time try duct tape.....
Thanks for the advice, but I’m an adult now and I try to stay twenty feet or so back from tracks when I’m admiring trains.
You can also grab a rail with your hand. If it’s vibrating, a train’s a-comin’!
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