The Weathering Depot

Another story from my days on the Indiana and Ohio railroad. Railroading gets in one’s blood, and I miss the railroad, but it’s a demanding and potentially dangerous job.

This more so when you come in contact with impatient drivers of vehicles who try to beat you across a crossing and wind up losing. Same for these close calls that will cause a part of your anatomy to pucker up.

Two cases in point happened to me. On one of the many weekends I was the brakeman on the tourist train we were heading southbound from Lebanon Ohio to Mason Ohio just topping the hill at the US state route 741 crossing when an 80’s tank of a station wagon tried to beat us across. The car was a family coming from the nearby Kings island amusement park, and had a husband who was driving, his wife in the front passenger seat, and two kids in the huge rear deck these cars had

Fortunately we weren’t going that fast as we hit the car where the wife was sitting and pushed it across the crossing into the drainage ditch along the road bed. Both the husband and wife suffered injuries while the kids had bumps and bruises, and of course we tied up the crossing waiting for the state patrol and emergency responders. The father/husband just didn’t want to wait five minutes for our train to pass, really not even five minutes. Unfortunately he found out quickly it just doesn’t pay to try to beat ANY train at a crossing.

The other sad thing about this incident besides the injuries was the fact this (excuse me for saying this) , but the moron sued the railroad claiming we didn’t have our locomotive headlight on, nor were we sounding the horn or bell which we definitely were doing. Another battle he lost. The next installment I’ll cover my two close calls!