Two 16 year girls were hit and killed by an Amtrak Accela train yesterday in the Philadelphia suburb of Norwood in broad daylight at mid morning. The Accela is authorised to travel at 110 mph at that spot. There is a Septa transit station at that location and although there is a fence between the four tracks at that site students from a nearby school and young people in general do cross the tracks. The Accela is an electric motor and like the earleir GG1, which was called by PRR workers "whispering death" it is relatively silent. When I railfan the NEC I am frequently surprised how close these things are before I actually notice them. This is not the first fatality at this location.What a shameful waste of life and what a traumatic tragedy for the Amtrak crew.
ahem....not the trains' fault. I can just see the ambulance chasers slithering-in now, claiming these kids sadly were not responsible for their own stupid and tragic actions.
Yet again an old saying rings true..."When you play with fire, you're going to get burned".
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/169902.aspx
Do we really need a 2nd thread?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I was just about to pose the same question. Apparently some folks don't bother the check the list of topics for active threads. Methinks that a reasonably intelligent person would've assumed that a thread on this would've been started already. Afterall, this happened yesterday morning. Certainly not "breaking news".
Ted M.
got trains?™
See my photos at: http://tedmarshall.rrpicturearchives.net/
Look at the posting times of the two threads. They are five minutes apart. At the time I started my thread.the first one had not yet appeared on this site so there was as yet NO thread on this topic yet posted. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person who does check the list of topics and since no thread had yet appeared on this topic I posted it having no way of knowing that another person was just about to post one as I was writing mine. Perhaps the moderator can collapse the two threads into one.
kevikens Look at the posting times of the two threads. They are five minutes apart. At the time I started my thread.the first one had not yet appeared on this site so there was as yet NO thread on this topic yet posted. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person who does check the list of topics and since no thread had yet appeared on this topic I posted it having no way of knowing that another person was just about to post one as I was writing mine.
Look at the posting times of the two threads. They are five minutes apart. At the time I started my thread.the first one had not yet appeared on this site so there was as yet NO thread on this topic yet posted. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person who does check the list of topics and since no thread had yet appeared on this topic I posted it having no way of knowing that another person was just about to post one as I was writing mine.
With all due respect, I did look at the posting times of the two threads. The existing thread about the PA incident was started yesterday at 8:42 PM. You started this thread at 11:15 AM today. I'm sorry if I ruffled your feathers, but you apparently didn't notice that a thread about this topic already existed.
Perhaps the moderator can collapse the two threads into one.
Better yet... how about we abandon this one all together and let it die peacefully...?
Nevertheless, I agree with MC. I can’t imagine the feeling of the parents, and of the train crew. Sad stuff.
The road to to success is always under construction. _____________________________________________________________________________ When the going gets tough, the tough use duct tape.
Yesterday the Coroner's Office reported that the deaths of the two girls was suicide. Apparently, as witnessed by a third girl who backed out of the suicide pact and tried to dissuade them, the two stepped onto the track of the oncoming Accela, hugged each other and were killed instantly. This mornings's newspaper said that fellow students and the girls' parents were distraught. The saddest part of the story was the effect on the engineer and conductor who were both said to have asked to be removed from duty and Amtrak complied and sent a new crew to continue the trip. Decency requires that we go no further into that except to say that it will be a long time, if ever, that the third girl and the Amtrak crew can erase those images from their minds. I have heard and read that train engineers, if they operate trains long enough, will have to deal with similar scenarios. I guess operating locomotives has a very unpleasant downside.
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