There was an incident back in 2021 I witnessed which also had me thinking “what were you thinking !?”.
I live along the old Nickel Plate Road mainline, on the western side of Cleveland. Specifically, the bit built originally as a commuter line in the 1860s and taken over by the NKP.
There are a lot of grade crossings going through town, rather close together, and the line isn’t super elevated or anything. It’s unfortunately quite common for people to walk along the tracks. Cars have been hit, too.
What’s less common is the near-miss I witnessed one afternoon in 2021. I take the bus to college (finished a masters degree in Public History, now almost done with a certification in Historical Building Preservation), the stop for which is on the other side of the tracks, which themselves are at the base of a large hill. Anyhow, there I am walking along as usual (ok, fine, running a bit late), behind some other guy, and I hear a train’s horn blaring as it books it through town. I stop, because I don’t particularly feel like being atomized today. The guy just... keeps walking! I can’t recall if the gates were already down or if they came down as he crossed the tracks... I may have yelled “look out!” or something like that, I don’t quite recall. It all seemed like a blur. I do remember that the engineer was laying it on the horn, and I’m pretty sure he and I both expected to see a man die that day. Thank the stars, he made it across with seconds to spare.
Now, I don’t know if he was hearing impaired or something, but he wasn’t using earbuds, headphones, or looking at a mobile device: you know, any of the usual “wasn’t paying attention” things. We’ve all been guilty of it sometimes, which is incidentally is partly why our buses now absurdly announce “Caution, Bus Approaching! Caution!” when driving past. Nor, as I mentioned before, was he walking down the tracks, but rather across them. And it wasn’t a car, which you can sort understand the “I can beat a train” mentality with.
Nosirree, he just walked into the path of an oncoming train! What was he thinking!? Heavens only knows, though it makes you think “Are you OK, man? Do you need help?”. Mostly, I was just glad I didn’t see a guy buy the farm that day. Scary! I can’t imagine what the train crew felt that day.
