STAY OFF TRACKS: 2nd verse, same as the 1st

[ironhorseman]

I don't how to say this.

The STAY OFF THE TRACKS http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=5&TOPIC_ID=6562 thread I started didn't go exactly the way I had hoped. I feel the discussion got off track (no pun intended) and I feel the point was missed, not completely by all of those who contributed, but, mostly it got away from what I intended. Now that I look back at it I feel I wrote too much in the initial post. I want to take the opportunity here to reaffirm my intentions since that topic has once again reached the front page of the forum after a long absence from view.

THE SITUATION:
August 2003: I ride down to the railroad tracks by the cememtery on my bicycle. A train is coming. Trains regularly come through town at 45-50mph+. 3 teenagers are down there on the tracks. 2 sit on this small bridge watching the 3rd one sitting on the mainline on the tracks between the rails of the oncoming train. Arms crossed, legs folded, sitting, facing the train. I pull up, they see me, they leave, seconds later the train zooms by. 2 kids walk, 1 rides his bike. They try to hide in the hedgerow but I got the kid riding the bike when he came into the clearing. He was the one sitting between the rails. I tell him, with insults or humilitation, what could happen, why it's illegal, and why he shouldn't do that ever again. Then I went on my way.

When I saw this event unfolding my heart stopped. I couldn't believe my eyes. As they ran away I decided right there I HAD to do something. I told them how I felt.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY:
INTERVENTION leads to PREVENTION (sometimes). What if I had done nothing? What if I just let them go? NO! Somehow I had to step in. Getting seen is not embarassing enough. I had to confront them.

Now, there's more than way to think about this. I figure that some of you wouldn't want to confront people. You might get nervous, the perpetrator might get angry or violent, some of you don't want to get involved. That's normal. But I say if we don't get involved someone will get killed. More train crews will carry that burden of killing someone. More talk will spread throughout the railroad's, both in management and in the labor departments. The newspapers will write more articles. More editorials will be printed on how unsafe railroads are versus how it was the pedestrians responsibility. Politicians will make more speeches on safety. More laws will be passed to "protect" us pedestrians. And after all that is said and done, despite all the new safety measures and public awareness, someone will get killed, again, and the cycle will repeat itself.

IT'S ABOUT MAKING A DIFFERENCE, NOT STANDING IDLY BY
Call me crazy, but I believe we're put on Earth and a certain time and certain place for certain reasons. I believe my presence that day made a difference. I shudder to think what would have happened if I decided to stay indoors that day and play train simulator. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had taken a different route to a different place to the railroad tracks (I had intended to go the opposite direction out into the country, but when I heard that train horn I decided to go ahead and race to the nearest tracks).

I would like think, no, I KNOW I made a difference that day. Those kids may have tuned me out of their consciousness while I blabbed on about safety, but it should have sunk into their subconsciousness. My lecture was illustrated just about a month or two later when some (drunk) left a bar and while walking home crossed the tracks at a non-designated crossing and was struck and killed by train. I remember I was awake late that night playing train simulator. I figured by the time stated in the paper that I had just went to bed when it happened so I was awake when it happened. It's funny I didn't hear anything except that sound the locomotive makes when the breaks are released.

YEAH, BUT WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO?
So, what are you gonna do? Next time you see someone goofing around, walking, sitting, playing, etc. on the tracks are you gonna confront them or are you gonna let it pass and then talk about here? (Expect, of course, you train crews because I know you're on the train just doing your job and the most you can do at that moment is lay on the horn.)

What am I going to tell you, the readers of this forum? Not to play on the tracks? No, you all know better than. What I want you to do, although I have no control over you, is to stop others who don't know better. Operation Lifesaver can't reach everyone. Most people don't know about. Most of my friends are not railfans and don't know the first thing about trains except it's an inconvience in their life on their commute to work.

Do these 3 things:

• INTERVENE
• INTERVENE
• INTERVENE

Prevention, I believe, is the key.

Everybody talks about trespassing but nobody does anything about it. If you think it's the railroad's business to keep people off their own tracks then I feel sorry for you. It's your responcibility as a human being to help out your fellow human beings.

Maybe this thread will make a difference. Maybe you will take a different approach when the situation arrives, or maybe it will be change the way we discuss railroad safety on this forum. Us railfan's are probably the most rail safety conscious people of all, but is it productive and helpful to post news of accidents here and talk about it? If it is then don't let me stop you. But the way I see it they all turn out to be the same discussion over and over again and eventually it get's ignored and drops from view, until the next accident occurs.

All I'm trying to do is to give a different point of view on the same old topic, if that is at all possible.

Stay off the tracks for your own good, get others to get off the tracks for their own good.

Merry Christmas and have a safe and uneventful holliday season.

(geez, this one's longer than the stay off the tracks thread! Ugh, well, I hope I made myself clear)

(if it sounds like I've repeated myself over and over again that's just rhetoric)