Fine.

Now please explain the drama and headlines that accompany accidents involving regular service freight trains, Amtrak, light rail lines, and the Brightline service on the Florida East Coast Railway--and the same lack of hoopla about car wrecks.

I say we have a double standard. I say some of our citizens, for whatever reason, are deathly afraid of something that at worst causes only 1/52nd of the deaths our cars do.

We even have people who wonder why the train or light rail car didn't swerve to avoid an accident!

Well, I have to admit that's a rant! Please forgive me for that.

We've done movements on the DL or late at night to keep the nuts from getting in the way endangering themselves or others.

In the image, also note the guy standing in the gauge and his buddy right next to him....

And it's not just next to the rails that people stupid. We were on the Bellaire ramp to the bridge at Benwood, WV and watched a guy skid to a stop on a parallel street below, jump out with three cameras and a tripod and started shooting in the middle of the street. The other drivers were not happy.

I had a complaint about moderation and the 844 incident today… That individual suggested that we should move it to the railfan sub-forum. I don't agree...

The 844 incident has meaning for railroad preservation... The affects us on many levels

Incidents can result in changes in insurance coverage... think about the PA/OH steam tractor incident...

More likely they affect how the public see us... We know the locomotive didn't swerve off the tracks, hit the woman, then regain the tracks... but the public doesn't "get" that... It is not clear if she was photographing and too close to the tracks or possibly something else... We shouldn’t blame her… We can question if the public (and railfans) have "rail sense"... this might be a issue which is growing as people no longer regularly interact with railroads (when was the last time you sat at a crossing and counted the cars)

More importantly, how do we react publicly when the worst happens... Do we ignore it... claim innocence... let the press own the facts... or make a well thought out statement... Sympathizing with the lost... speaking to facts...

Too often the “press” needs someone to blame… too often don’t explain ourselves well… Sometimes we say nothing... sometimes we claim that we, the industry, the crew (who are truly are a victim), the rail fan community (who are there to see the engine run) are the victim (which in some sense we are) but that doesn’t play well in the public forum.

As your moderator, I am watching... but so far no one on RYPN has been out of line... I can't speak for other boards... and I believe that generally we let a conversation police itself if possible... Please consider what you have to contribute before hitting the "Post" icon...

Thanks, Randy

Well said. Thank you.

Very sad thing, condolences to all involved.

Speaking of situational awareness I know an avid nature photographer that lined up a great shot on a very photogenic alligator, perfect scene, great lighting....

He kept adjusting the zoom lens to get nice full frame shots and kept burning up the film...

THEN he happened to look up from the viewfinder to realize the alligator had been slowly closing the distance between the two and was within lunging distance.....

Very sad and unfortunate occurrence, trains have become so rare in most folks everyday life these days that people have forgotten how dangerous they are....

One of the loco engineers my Dad worked with came around a curve at passenger train speed to see someone walk from their car to the middle of the tracks, make a sign of the cross and sit down......... That's a very bad day at work.

Certainly.

Auto accidents happen daily. Fatal ones, even. It's not "news."

Train accidents--be they grade crossing collisions, derailments, or whatever--do not, at least not within the coverage area of the newspaper/news show/etc. in question. if/when it happens, it, different from the norm--it's news.

And train accidents tend, as a rule, to be more "spectacular" and dramatic for the purposes of video and photography.

Airliner crashes get even bigger headlines and coverage--but there are even fewer of them now than 25 to 50 years ago.

And yet sadly, for us, they don't seem to get the negative consequences we do.

It seems the whole rail industry, and especially the preservation side of it, is always on the edge of disaster. We don't see that for the air business, the car business, the oil business that initially shipped a load of oil that was not placarded properly, and was instead as volatile as gasoline. . .and was a factor in a horrible wreck that incinerated 47 people.

Why do we always face the consequences, or at least seem to feel them more strongly?

If this incident proves anything, it proves that accidents around excursion trains are extremely rare, despite the thousands of people the line the tracks everywhere this train goes. I would even go so far as to say that your danger of being killed around excursion trains are probably the lowest out of any type of transportation related event. Air shows, monster truck shows, racing events, all have fatalities on a fairly regular basis. Large moving pieces of machinery pose a danger to anyone around them and there is little to be done once they get out of control.

I have followed this train from the 80's too many times to count. I joked to Ed once that I probably could make a video of the UP 844 going every mile from Denver to Cheyenne and back. One thing I have found in these small towns is that the locals who live near the tracks are frequently drunk in the evenings and lack good judgment. I have seen them do some very stupid things like standing in the middle of the of passing track saluting the train with a beer in their hand. I have also seen countless times children placing coins on the track with the steam locomotive only seconds away all the while the parents watch them.

I did talk to a witness and he said she was there alone. This is sounding like either a suicide or perhaps a local came out of her house to film the train intoxicated by drugs or alcohol. Either way her foot is on the rail tie. No way any rational person could not know they were not going to be hit.

As far as insurance rates goes. Union Pacific makes billions every quarter. They are probably one of the most valuable companies in the United States. You really think they pay insurance companies every year to insure tens of billions of dollars in assets? No. They have enough money to cover anything and everything that could go wrong. They could buy any insurance company on the planet if they really wanted to.

You are not considering exposure, J3a-614.

According to this NBC News article, there were 575 trespasser fataalities in 2017:
Railroad trespassing fatalities in the U.S. reach 10-year high
Dividing the 575 trespasser deaths by 365 days in the year gives a rate of 1.57 trespasser fatalities per day.... for the entire US rail system.

My understanding is that this was UP's first steam excursion of the year, so its trespasser fatality rate for the year is 1 fatality in 2 days of operation (counting the positioning move) which equals 0.5 trespasser fatalities per day.

Here is a video. Its sad but goes to show you just how little some people know about train tracks and what runs on them. https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=CvAJz_1532292468

When I was in Conductor training for Union Pacific we spent about half an hour watching videos like this. They told us that this was the reality of our job. They said the longer you were in, the better the chance you would experience a death on the rails. Every engineer I worked with had killed someone at some point in time. One engineer ran over three people running on a long bridge. It's a sad reality for the railroad business that should be talked about more.

Glad someone released the video. It will clear the Union Pacific and give the crew some closure. I had to zoom in the video but it appears this woman is waving at the :36 mark. Leaning towards a suicide on this one.

Because no one, the general public, the news media, the Congress and state legislatures, can envision a world without automobiles, or airlines, or even oil... they are part of our everyday life, and we know we must accept the dangers. But there are a lot of people who can envision a world without steam (or any rail excursions) and few in the populations above would miss them, or even give them a second thought.

At the last second (0.38 mark) it looks like the individual actually walks toward the locomotive as if to pass it up close. I'm wondering if the photographer was mentally disturbed and didn't realize the dangerous situation they were truly in. This may have been a completely unintentional accident.

Are the sparks coming from the 844 the emergency brake?

I've seen several views of it, one of which was cropped/zoomed and quite honestly, it simply appears to be a clueless onlooker who was shooting video with her cell phone and completely lost situational awareness. A wide-angle lens can easily make things look further away than they really are. It doesn't look like a suicide attempt at all to me. The lady appeared to be totally focused on the screen of her phone.....not unlike people I see driving down the road every day.

Unfortunately, I've learned that common sense isn't all that common.

/Kevin Madore