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A few years ago, a few maintainer friends of mine were working on a siding switch and had cleared for a train. Lightning had struck the main line rails and a blue fire ball flew down the rails and just followed the rails. It had damaged the Hot Box Detector (HBD) about 1/2 mile north, the electronics inside the cabinet for the siding switch, and an event recorder at an interlocking 2 miles south of where the guys were standing. They were just about to start working on the switch when the lightning struck. Lightning doesn't always come from the sky and heads downward - it can start from the ground and work it's way up to a cloud. Difference in electrical potential. Case in point, a neighbor of mine who lives right behind my house had a lightning strike that required the fire dept's help. The huge tree in their back yard was untouched. They used to tell us a tall object will attract lightning to it for an area that is up to 3 times the height of the object. So, if a tree were 100 feet tall, then, lightning that is headed downwards would strike the tree 1st and would "protect" everything up to 300 feet away from the tree. Now, I should point out that the lightning strike that flew down the rails by my maintainer friends were working on amtrak's northeast corridor and they were surrounded by the catpoles that support the electrical catenary wiring system for the trains. These poles are on average 280 feet apart, up to 100 feet tall, and are on both sides of the tracks. Those guys were basically surrounded by "lightning rods", but, that didn't help them!
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