I don't know how widespread this newsstory has reached but I'll bet we gained and lost a new train enthusiast in record time. www.kctv5.com/news/20211331/detail.html
It says he rode on the couplings for 52 miles at speeds of up to 45 MPH . . .
Better'n a skateboard!
One lucky young man.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
As the parent of a 7 year old myself I have to wonder how that could happen. Hopefully mom and dad got the wake up call...
Wow.....That is a shocking story with a blessed ending....! I sure hope this scary lesson along with what the parants might be able to inform the young son, that it will be the end of such escapades....
Thank the Lord for his safety...
Quentin
That little boy is lucky he didn’t get his fingers/toes caught in between the knuckles while the slack was in. When it ran out, it would have crushed his fingers/toes. I wonder if he still wants to work for the railroads???
The road to to success is always under construction. _____________________________________________________________________________ When the going gets tough, the tough use duct tape.
I am hoping he was on the cut lever or else he WOULD have lost fingers or toes.
Maybe it was hoppers and he wasn't actually "on the couplers."
I can't imagine he was riding on the couplers......Surely, he managed to climb up on the end of the car....maybe a covered hopper with a space at the end....
This was quite the story. It reminded me of all the things I wanted to do on and around the trains I saw all the time. The difference though, I guess, is that I was exposed to trains everyday, whereas this young fellow just started to notice them.
I was given rules about what to do and not do around the tracks and trains from before I can remember. As my parents observed many years later, when my brother and me were really young, trains were actually fairly scary because they seemed so big. And I was exposed to mainline steam from less than a week old so I may have had an influence on my younger brother. He was born after we moved to a branch line station.
One thing I always wanted to do though was ride in the passenger part of the combine on the mixed train. My brother and I did ride in the cupola of the caboose from Irricana to Beiseker, about five miles. That line was 25 MPH branch line and siting that far above the tracks and rocking back and forth would have made a good Gravol ad. I really wanted to ride in the combine after that trip, but we moved to Calgary the following winter.
What was interesting though was about 10 years ago there was some child psychologist on the TV news talking about teaching the rules of the world to children. She say's things like don't run out between parked cars, or don't put your finger in the electrical socket, and incredibly, without a moments hesitation, I said out loud "Don't go past the second row of nails!" When trains were moving. The planks on the platform were nailed to the support timbers underneath, in rows, and not going past the second row of nails away from the building was the all-important, all-consuming, all-powerful LAW. Accept no compromises. You would stay alive that way.
Getting back to this little boy though, I wonder if he got on to a coupler with a long drawbar and had one leg over each side like he was riding a horse, or was he as Larry suggests, sitting on the end of a hopper. With all the noise and the slack running in and out, I imagine he would have been crying for most of the fifty miles. A story that generates many emotions and memories.
AgentKid
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
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