Posted on 12/16/2011 11:15:06 AM PST by DemforBush
A young couple hopping railroad cars across the country was found dead under a mound of coal at a Florida power plant.
Christopher Artes, 25, and Medeana Hendershot, 22, shared a passion for illegally hopping freight trains and traveling the country without a set plan...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Whew! That was close honey. Good thing we are on top of the coal pile. ....Rumble. whooosh! crickets
A guy who sat in front of me in my math class got ran over and was left with only one leg and one arm from a train accident (running from the guard)
They sure did Occupy the wrong coal car...
Sounds like they were probably doing some “Trainspotting” as well.
Most people are utterly ignorant of how modern rail infrastructure works and how automated many areas of the rails are now.
eg, those coal cars: Some unload with rotary dumpers. Those you’d see coming from way back on the train. Others just move slowly along either an elevated section of track or over a pit. An electrical signal tells the coal car “dump here.” A mechanism opens the bottom of the car and 100 tons of coal simply drops out the bottom of the car in a couple seconds. The train progresses slowly onwards...
As to what you hear? A whoosh. That’s about it. If you’re on an elevated track above the coal pile, you probably don’t hear much at all from on top of a loaded car - the bigger noise is down below you. If you were smart, you’d know what is coming because you felt the train slow to a crawl near a power plant. That’d be a really strong clue that things are about to get really interesting - but only if you could put 2+2 together to get something close to 4.
Same deal for grain cars. Simplot has a huge circular chunk of track in Idaho where a grain car comes in, they close the switch and the train unloads in a couple circuits around the circle of track. Switch opens up, train moseys off the circle and the next one pulls in. Not a whole lot of drama, just a whole lot of grain moved from train to feedlot silos...
Dumb people (and that includes a whole lot of people with advanced degrees) oughta stay away from modern machinery. They’ve got no notion what they’re messing with. I believe that this is a contributing reason why manufacturing sectors of the economy cannot find employees. I’ve had operators of large machine shops that service the coal mines of the Powder River Basin here in Wyoming tell me “You can see in the first 10 minutes of the interview that if I hire this guy, he’s going to be a red stain on the shop floor within the first month.” Lots of people simply have no clue, no situational awareness, no appreciation for *what* is dangerous, never mind *how* dangerous. And these guys in management of these shops tell me that the majority of their applicants now fall into this “future red grease slick” category.
Even the stationary ones are trouble. My nephew was recently playing on parked train cars with some college buddies and, as near as I can understand him yet, jumped from one car to another and fell thru the floorboards, landing chin first on the ground below. Half a day of surgery and a month of meals-by-straw later, he was able to squeeze a few solid crumbs between the new spaces in his teeth. I’ll find out more over Christmas dinner, maybe get a better telling of what he remembers of the event.
You should have tried to hop aboard Amtrak. It might not be free, but it is SAFER.*
* When morons don't try to play chicken with their cars...
They're two, they're four, they're six, they're eight;
Shunting trucks and hauling freight...
Yes, I have a three-year old.
How can they be dead? The headline said they were buried alive.
For a couple of year period in my very young life, I hopped trains at least once a week. Great adventure. Huge, powerful machinery, speed, danger, something you're not supposed to do, what's not to like for a young boy?
I'll pray that he makes a speedy recovery.
OK, that cracked me up, but I can't let it go without some kind of response. How about...
How long did it take you to recover?
I'll pray that he makes a speedy recovery.
No No No...I should have stolen and paraphrased the line from Top Secret...
I'll let you know if his condition changes.
My Mom’s uncle was decapitated when he tried to jump on a moving train.
I'll pray that he makes a speedy recovery.
OK, that cracked me up, but I can't let it go without some kind of response. How about...Is no-one familiar with Bob Nelson's football player comedy skit? It is possibly one of the top-ten funniest skits ever performed.
How long did it take you to recover?
i went to school in Providence, with Kit Boss, one of the writers on Family Guy.
Be glad to give you a referral if you are trying to get into that line of work.
Not a thing to be goofing around with.
I want to know why Willie didn’t save them....
W. Audrey was a railroad buff and Anglican priest, who liked to vacation of the Isle of Man, which he knew was part of the Anglican diocese of Man and Sodor. Sodor was previously the Norwegian diocese of “Sodor”, meaning southern islands, e.g., the Shetlands, which passed from Norwegian to English eccliastical control around 1100.
Audrey wrote the railway series of books, but Thomas doesn’t show up until the fifth or sixth book. And yes, I have grandkids. Is your three year old a girl, because I think Thomas and Friends is a guy thing.
That’s coald. I have a lump in my throat!
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