One of problems today, is people don't really interact with the railroads or streetcars like they did 60 or 70 years ago. Back then people rode trains and walked across street crossings etc. Now they drive down the road not caring or paying attention to anything or curious about anything but their own world. There was a video on Facebook showing a bunch a people crowded onto an unused depot platform waiting for the 844 to come by and I couldn't believe they were right up to edge of the bricks. The photographer was so close to tracks that the 844 was just a blur. People now a days don't know how wide a train is or how time, distance and speed is so deceiving with such a large object as a train.
What can we do about it, teach railroad safety in all the grade schools and drivers education classes, if they don't already. Have public safety announcements in the newspapers and on TV especially right before a special train movement like a steam trip.

I spoke to one of the rules/safety guy at the railroad I retired from and he told me the UP fatality incident was well discussed by all management. He further stated that other roads were also discussing the fact of "attractive nusiance" which occurs when special movements, passenger excursions and steam locomotives are on the property. Many roads were thankful these were not allowed on their rails.

A take away from this incident is that all operating museums need to double up on their rules/safety training and testing to insure nothing happens on our properties since it appears this may be the final place where steam runs. A person can get knocked down and run over by a 5 MPH movement just as easy as one going 50 MPH. All operations whether paid or volunteer need to be #1, safe.

exprail

It was a series of misfortunes that brought about the demise of NS steam. I am hoping the UP does not throw in the towel on the heritage program. It would be all too easy to say enough is enough and retire the locomotives and cars permanently.

What about 4014? Will they go ahead with trips with Bigboy or will she become another 1218? Here's to hoping for several successful trips with Bigboy next year and many years after.

Robert

I remember a engineer told me that if there was a tanker truck on the tracks not only should you not slow down or apply the emergency brakes but you should speed up to maximum track speed. If the truck is a tanker loaded with fuel then it will burn the locomotives, crew, and several cars into a smoldering pile of ash if you are moving slow enough. You hit it fast enough you will likely escape the fireball and possibly save the entire train depending on the length. This was not a official rule. but it was well understood that in this situation, speeding up and blowing through the fireball was the best option.

As far as throttle position on the 844. It wasn't working very hard. This area is totally flat. If anything it was probably drifting. The train usually slows when coming to the outskirts of Denver.

Woman stuck by train has been identified as 56-year old Kelly Yarish.

Union Pacific #844 returned to Cheyenne today pulling some freight cars.

Enough is enough of what??? Union Pacific has fatalities probably on a weekly basis. Do you want to shut down the whole railroad because people get killed around their trains? You had 888 people killed by trains in 2017 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ra ... gh-n852881

I fail to see how this persons life is any more important that the other 888 people killed by trains. Would you feel the same way if she was hit and survived? Should we stop running trains through large cities because that is where the majority of the fatalities occur?

I also think it is nonsense to suggest that by running the #844 you increase your risk of killing someone because you have large crowds of people by the tracks. As I said before people killed or injured around excursion trains are extremely rare. This is the first time I have heard of a fatality with the #844. In this case the woman was 100% at fault. The crew did everything by the book and they should not be punished for it.

Of course the Big boy will press on. This is a lifetime statement by the railroad. It is not only important for the railroad but for the World as well as the World is watching. This woman and this incident will quickly be forgotten.

Education has a ways to go. Yesterday I was operating, and I was amazed at how many people were standing too close to the track, very near the rail, taking pictures of me approaching with their cell phones. Of course, I'm running a much shorter train at lower speeds. So I slow down, I whistle, I shout and wave my hands, and I'm thinking "Haven't these people heard about the 844!?!?!?" I guess not!

No. Actually, a very, very few people will know or remember this. I am sure my daughter in Columbus, Ohio does not know about it. My dad does not know about it. I don't think any of my family know about it, except my son, who is a member of RYPN.

If there is rail, crossties, or crushed stone under your feet, you and the train will unfortunately meet.

Trite, but it has kept me out of trouble.

A friend watched the video and had a plausible take, in that he feels that since she was alone and on the shadow side, she might have just pulled up, heard what was coming and was shooting video for someone or for likes online later.

Other than some "local news" stories scattered around, it didn't get reported in big outlets that I'm aware if where you wouldn't have to go looking for it.

Hi,




Yes, but in this case I can't see what the railroad or the lawmakers could improve yet. Somebody just trespassed.




Well, after seeing the drone footage I personally think nobody and nothing is to blame but her.




Yes, probably. I don't like to say it here, but as to what I have experienced, some people around the tracks in the USA semingly tend to behave more selfish, more careless and more naive than in all other western countries I have visited, may be because of the reason you mentioned. Just look up any youtube 844 video and see how some people act. And compare this to, say, a British, Polish, German, Swiss steam event.



The public, especially the lawyers, will always seek to put the blame on somebody. If I were the spokesman of such a thing as a "railroad preservation industry (RYPI)", I would actively influence the public discussion and above all, strictly ban the word "steam" from all the narrative around this incident.

For it was NOT a "steam locomotive accident", it most obviously was an accident caused by a woman with a cellphone. Also I would try to seek all legal possibilities to spread the drone footage to the public and by doing this minimize the lawyers' interest in suing the RR as well as destroy the media narrative of The Evil Train.

Rather let's stick their noses towards the cell phone the woman was obviously using.

As mentioned above, people watching their cellphones while acting in real life are a potential source for accidents of all sorts. Did the cellphone makers have exclaimers concerning the use whilst taking part of traffic in their manuals, the "coffee may be hot" - or "objects in the mirror" - style? Probably the "responsibility" of cell-phone makers would make a good starting point here for the lawyers rather than fighting a railroad that has been working for nearly 150 years.

Mike

No one is saying the crew should be punished for the accident that occurred. No one.

But I'm going to--just for the sake of devil's advocate--present the way UP risk management COULD look at this accident:

"We run freight trains every day. It's necessary for our bottom line. We make profit doing so. Nobody pays attention to our trains except when they get held up at a crossing. If they get killed by one of our trains, it's entirely on them.

The steam trains get publicity and attract thousands to trespass. Legally, it's an attractive nuisance. They don't make us any profit; we lose money on them. Furthermore, too many people today are increasingly dumb, and eventually this will happen again. Furthermore, survivors hire ambulance-chasing lawyers more often, and juries are stupid and emotional. Simply put, this is far too big a financial risk. We have to use them for display only, and transport them in the dead of night from here on in."

I'm not going to say that they're going to say that.

But the original NS steam program was shut down, according to reports, after a risk management official said after a switching accident smashed several leased passenger cars waiting for an excursion movement in a yard in Lynchburg on Sept. 27th, 1994:
"And what if those had been loaded with passengers?"

Not always the case. If you have a train of ethanol, crude oil, or 700+ passengers, throwing the train in emergency may do more harm than good. Do you really want to risk throwing a bunch of people around, causing further injury, or risk derailing, over one person who has put themselves in a bad situation? If a trespasser strike has already taken place, or is imminent, full service is often a much better option if you have a trainload of people who may not be ready for a sudden run in or jolt.

Since the lady’s name was posted, I was able to do a little digging, found her FB page and read comments from some of her good friends. Sounds like a nice lady, mid 50s, raised a family, married, active in the community, had plenty of friends, looks like there may be grand children. All in all, a good person. I’m sure she has seen a train before and living in the area, maybe steam as well.

If you look at the video, while there is a crossing near by, she was well within what looked like a yard area to me. Away from other photographers, behind most of them thus no one to really give her any warning. The key here to me is that this is not a spot where you would find your typical grand mother hanging out.

This was not a crowd either. Just a few people really, and then her alone by the rail head.

Notice the guy with the motor cycle. He kept his distance and was probably the only person who could have helped warn her. He runs as the train approaches. He runs a good distance as well. Perhaps the sound of the braking startled him? Not sure. Or he saw her get hit and just wanted to run away. He saw something awful here as well.

In my mind, we have a spot where you would not find the usual grand mother hanging out. She seems to be on her own, again which strikes me odd, and in an odd location, again in my mind. And she is oblivious as the train approaches. What’s missing here?

In reading about her, I did find where she apparently suffered a stroke at some point in the past. Did she have some sort of disability, even a minor one? Hearing issues? Vision issues? Some sort of perception or cognitive issue? Did she slip away from the house without family knowing and wander off? We don’t know really, but as I hunt for an explanation of why she was where she was, its the only answer I can come up with.

Having read the comments about the lady, I now really feel for her. Somehow, she got herself into a bad spot with no one to help her.

J.R. May

I've been in a "trespasser fatality" before as a conductor. It's not something you want to have happen in your workday. Mine was a woman sitting on the edge of the track drinking with friends, just enough to be off-balance so that when she went to get up to get away from our train (which had just left Wilsmere yard, so we were not exceeding 25 mph), she lost her balance and sat back down on the track just as we got to her. I'll never forget the sickening thud. We followed the rules for such an event. The engineer sounded the horn continuously until we struck her, then he put the train in emergency, made an emergency radio transmission and called the dispatcher, while I got my stuff on to go back and look. Even at less than 25 mph going slightly upgrade the head-end was nearly 20 cars from the point of impact, and by the time I got back there the first emergency responders were already there. She we still barely alive, in one piece, but not expected to live.

The Philly Train Master on duty on that Sunday night who came out to get us was great. He was a great guy and we were lucky it wasn't a certain other one who was a real so-and-so who probably would have tried to make us finish the trip. We were told we would be hearing from a counselor from Jacksonville the next day. Well, I did, and he spent nearly an hour trying to convince me not to take the three days off I was entitled to after such and incident. So I took four days off, due to my outrage over that.

I know co-workers who have been involved in multiple fatality events. One long-time engineer I worked with killed four teenagers at once in a truly freak accident. Anyone familiar with the Washington, DC are might know where the Capital Beltway crosses the CSX Capital Sub at Greenbelt just East of U. S. Rt. 1. Now the Metrorail Green Line storage and maintenance facility is there, but it was a cornfield for the Beltsville USDA Research farm back then. Anyway, a car load of teenagers lost control and flew off the overpass just as my coworker's train was coming under it. Like throwing a baseball up in the air and hitting it, the nose of his lead unit caught the car in mid-air and knocked it into the cornfield. In all, he told me he had been involved in something like 23 fatalities in his career. Yeah.

Another bad place where trespassers frequently die is the campus of the University of Delaware at Newark. The Philly Sub runs through the campus and the middle of town. Many years the crews know it is frat rush week because some drunken freshman gets run over trying to crawl up the middle of the right-of-way. Stick around the railroad long enough and you'll hear plenty of stories that belong on Tales From the Crypt.

Let's hope that the crew on 844 at the time is getting the counseling they might need for this situation. That's the benefit this crew has over volunteers, in that they're UP employees who have benefits. I sincerely hope they take advantage of the opportunities to talk with a professional (and I don't mean just foe the investigation). In a male culture, men are expected to 'suck it up and drive on,' but this kind of thing will just sit and wait as long as it has to and eventually, it will manifest itself badly somehow.

The guy was taking a selfie, I'd think he either realized he got the shot and should get out of there, or maybe the sound of the whistle (or just the loco itself) startled him. Don't forget, big engines like 844, 4449 and 261 surprise people who've never seen a steam engine bigger than a park one moving before. That's a lot of mass and movement when you're not familiar with steam!
I truly doubt the bike guy ran because of the lady being hit, as generally I'd think most biker types (most of the ones I know, anyway) would be moving toward her after the impact to see what they could do.
Nobody on the opposite side of the tracks seems to be reacting to her at all, as they seem to be also focusing on the train (which makes plenty of sense).