I don't see the big deal with letting kids ride in the cab if it happens to be ok with the engineer. Assuming they are willing to keep quiet and stay out of the way, of course.
AlohaActually, I have to wonder if a well-designed program that allowed and encouraged non-railroad employees to get some experience in the cab could improve safety.
There is a crushed car on a trailer at UP's No. Platte yard that they use for education, kind of like the crushed cars that are used to educate high schoolers about drunk driving. (Photo)Actually, I have to wonder if a well-designed program that allowed and encouraged non-railroad employees to get some experience in the cab could improve safety.
One of the biggest safety problems railroads have is grade crossing accidents where people failed to appreciate how poorly the brakes on a train work. If every high school student who has a license to drive an automobile had either had a chance to try to stop a train a few times or at least had a friend around their age who had, people might have a better appreciation of the importance of waiting for the train. Though this experience would probably be better gotten with freight trains than passenger trains.
I get the impression that most of the things that happen in a cab don't happen very quickly, in general, either, which would help if a student engineer does something wrong that the supervising engineer needs to correct. I get the impression that it may not be as dangerous as an automobile, where a second or two of bad steering can cause a collision.
From looking at that photo, I'm not convinced that the driver of that automobile would have been killed by that locomotive.There is a dandy exhibit in Northern Ohio at the rail museum at Bellevue. At least it was there about 10 years ago when I took this one.
If that was my entire education, I'd expect a train at any time, and assume the train would need approximately two seconds more to stop than an automobile approaching from the same speed and direction, when I was deciding whether to pull out in front of that train.There is a crushed car on a trailer at UP's No. Platte yard that they use for education, kind of like the crushed cars that are used to educate high schoolers about drunk driving. (Photo) I think you can get the message to a lot more kids this way.
Saw an absolutely GREAT feature on local news show about ten years ago. The railroad had the film crew in the cab filming all kinds of harrowing events with kids darting out across the crossing on their bicycles and whatnot. Then they had a clock on the lower part of the screen showing how close they came to impact. The thing was, it looked like they made only one pass through town to get all the footage they needed. Its terrific TV and every line ought to do it once a year.I've seen a lot of people sitting on tracks waiting to make left turns and such- they could move a bit and not put themselves in harm way. Videos of trains taking a large truck or bus and exploding it aside like a hand swats a gnat go a long way to convince people, trust me.
I completely agree that kids driving trains is unacceptable, especially on a mainline or such. Riding in the cab and driving a train are different.
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