Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Trains Suck

Yesterday, I came to the railroad tracks at the southern edge of town, and two cars were stopped right on the tracks waiting for a car up ahead to turn left, one with its rear end hanging over a rail and one with its front end hanging over the other rail. I don't understand why anyone would take such a risk. Certainly, the chance of a train approaching and the driver being unable to move because of traffic or stalling out the car is very small, but the result of such an occurrence means certain death. So, why stop on the railroad tracks like that?

I tend to stop and hang back pretty far from the railroad crossing if the lights start flashing and the gates come down. Drivers of other vehicles have actually had the nerve to honk at me, urging me to move up the ten or twelve car lengths to the crossing gate or to go around me and stop much closer to the tracks. I do not move.

I don't make any bones about admitting that I have a fear of speeding trains. There are two reasons why I stop so far back from the tracks with a train approaching.

Reason No. 1: Trains become de-railed. Automobiles and SUV's would be crushed by a de-railed train. This is not an irrational fear. There are train derailments every day, some serious, some not so serious. I refuse to be a part of a deadly train derailment by stopping 10 feet from the tracks with a train cruising by at 50 miles per hour.

Reason No. 2: Trains are fucking huge. They weigh a lot more ... many, many, many times more than the white VW Beetle with the black "The Who" sticker and peace symbol on the rear bumper or even a new 2006 Hummer Humongous. Now, I'm not real sure of the physics involved, but it is involved. I can assure you of that. Physics tells us that a high speed train creates like a vacuum and suction effect and totally pulls stuff towards it. If a car gets like too close to the train, it will get sucked right under the wheels of the train.

I might be wrong about the vacuum and suction thing; but if I am, then it's the immense gravity that trains have because they are like so massive in comparison to cars, and it is the gravity that pulls the car into the train. I read an article by Stephen Hawking and I'm pretty sure he agrees with me, that it's like either the vacuum with the concomitant sucking effect or the gravity thing that we have to worry about. In any event, it's pretty dangerous up there by the tracks.

Posted by Bill at June 30, 2005 11:58 PM