Train operators, what's the STRANGEST/CREEPIEST thing you've seen on the tracks?part-2 (r/AskReddit)

train operators have reddit what's the strangest / creepiest thing you've seen on the tracks part two a bonfire in the woods with a bunch of Juggalos hanging out faces were all painted up even had a big wooden cutout of the mascot guy which they burned on one morning at like 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday I saw a guy getting a bj from a prostitute I've seen girls tanning topless most duct up thing was a baby stroller with a toddler size dial duct taped to it we hit it and I wanted to die I thought it was a real kid taped to a stroller left in the gauge it was horrible it took about 10 minutes for the conductor to walk back and tell me it was a dog they had to get a different engineer that'll finish my assignment I'm on mobile so be gentle here okay so this might get buried or ignored because it's only kinda on topic but hear me out I live very close to the tracks I love the sound of a train in the distance and the steady growing and shrinking thunk-thunk of the tracks but I'm freaked out by the thought of the local tracks there's two ways to get to the main road a slightly longer route that has a bridge for cars that the train tracks pass under and a slightly shorter route that directly crosses the tracks I call it the cross road I refuse to drive at any time past broad daylight for some context the area along the crossroad is residential up until about 200 feet from the crossing after that there's a crumbling building in an overgrown field on one side and an overgrown deserted lot on the other side it's a small one lane road with barley enough passing room so all the growth makes it extremely hard to maneuver the rotting building is only a couple feet off the road so if you're stopped waiting for the Train on that side you're stuck almost an arm's reach of dark abandoned windows on the field side not when six inches off the edge of the road there's a concrete abyss of darkness it's supposedly the entrance to some kind of underground bunker or shelter but it's been abandoned too long that no one seems to know the details this thing is 3 feet high five feet long with no door or anything it's impossibly dark inside no matter how bright it is outside if you're waiting for the train on this side it's level with your car window the foot away oh and there's also a grave on the field side where someone tried to race the train no crossbars or lights at the crossing I've been living here for only a couple of years and used to take the cross road every day overtime though I started to get a very strong sense of panic / impending doom as I get close to the crossing at first it's only occasionally late at night I chalked it up to me being a chicken then I started to get it more often than every night something there felt wrong one particular night I had such a strong panic that when I was turning onto the road I almost stopped to turn around I convinced myself I was being stupid and kept going when I got to the track there was a pickup truck sitting there on the road by the tracks like he was waiting for the train to cross but there was no sign of the train I kinda stopped a couple car lengths back and waited a second confused then it happened thump something hit my car in the darkness a small thump but I almost had a heart attack I nope tried out and reversed like a madwoman until I could do a three-pointer in someone's driveway to turn around I never found out what was going on with that truck or what hit my car after a week of avoiding the crossroad I again convinced myself that I was being silly around dusk I took the road because it was still daylight and I thought it can't be scary in the light right wrong I felt like I was driving to my doom as soon as I passed the last house before the crossing as I approached I could see broken branches and debris all over the road scattered around the tracks nothing overhangs the tracks and branches that big would have had to be dragged away stew make it there things clearly broken it uprooted from around the bunker a cop car with lights on by the building but no cop in sight I bolted a month later it's noon broad daylight and I'm driving home I think hey I'll take the cross road and see if it's still weird again as soon as I get past the last house I feel incredibly uneasy lo and behold as I approached I see something a perfectly wrapped Christmas gift box placed perfectly smack dab in the middle of the road on the middle of the tracks it's about the width of a tire and silver with a red bow there's not really enough space to pass by it so I stopped in front of the tracks and get ready to get out and move but I couldn't bring myself to open the door my hand felt an icy chill the moment I grabbed the door handle I wish I had a cool end to this story but I don't I didn't get out of the car or see anything else I left and haven't taken that road since anyway if you made it this far thanks for reading TL DR I get a sense of doom every time I go over a specific railroad crossing nope doubt when I saw it perfectly wrapped Christmas presents sitting in the middle of the crossing and never went back I fixed track out outrun trains but lots and lots and lots of dead animals and I don't mean dead and together in one piece something about getting hit by a train almost always decapitates them sends their legs flying away from the body and were cuts their body clean in half somehow generally speaking most of their limps usually get severed off generally coyotes foxes and lots and lots of deer the only one I found sad was a decapitated Rottweiler that was a top one trying to track down the owner and tell them not to go looking for it but also to know he's not coming home at least he didn't suffer I was working in China in the 1990s on an upgrade to Beijing Metro we were looking for a problem track circuit in a tunnel whilst the line was closed I had a Chinese translator with me and my meter we walked in pitch darkness using torches for about 200 meters and in the distance I could see two bright orange glows it was quiet spooky and even though my brain told me it must be something normal it looked like the eyes of a demon then we started to hear animalistic grunts I was scared now and even my translator thought we should turn back as we approached I shone my torch I to the distance there with their bare asses hanging over the tracks were two Chinese construction workers taking dumps between the running rails the orange demon eyes glow were from the cigarettes they were smoking they just ignored us and we walked by as they continued to grunt none on substantial piles of poop between the rail it was nasty I worked for one of the busiest train operators in the UK not to get too specific but two months into the job I had a teenage girl jump I see it coming a mile away of a bombing 100 miles per hour down the main line it was impossible to stop she pulled her hood over her face and jumped that was a rough day luckily I had a conductor with me who was very supportive until management and police arrived I carried on with my day otherwise I don't think I would have operated a train again the creepy part and this is the feeling you have knowing what is about to happen in seeing the person's face okay so I used to be a driver who was a third-party contractor who picked up and dropped off engineers slash conductors when they timed out sometimes they would time out at the most inconvenient locations and I would have to go pick them up in a co-worker in a different city would drop off a replacement well I received a call at 8:00 p.m. that I was going to pick someone up at 11 p.m. at a location in the Sierra Mountains on my way I was cruising down the main freeway exited off of a junction onto a two-way highway using the Google Maps my location I type was not on a main road stress kicked in as I was going to have to take a dirt road in the mountains with fading cellphone service and would have to navigate in the dark my radio worked in was the best line of communication to the train well as I was traveling down a dirt road at 10:30 at night something hit the top of my vehicle I slowed down locking my doors and stopped what the effort CK was that I looked around and saw nothing the road I was on had dense trees a foot of clearance on each side of the vehicle and the path didn't seem to be traveled much as plants were growing in the middle of the road path I decide to crawl over my seats to look at the back as no way in hell am i opening the doors nothing I pause and stare quietly waiting to see if anything moves my radio was on and the conductor asked if I was on the line or there I quickly realized it was the locomotive I was going to meet her responded that I was on the way and on the dirt road heading toward them they quickly responded with you made sure you took the first right off the two-way highway right I stated yes he then stated but you kept going I stated yes now I'm frustrated because I'm thinking I traveled more than I needed to then out of the corner of my eye on the driver's side window too big a size reflecting light from my headlights are deadlocked on me oh crap as my heart drops adrenaline hit me but I have no idea if it sees me through the tented windows I don't dare move the eyes were large and seemed to be tracking after staring for a moment which seemed like at me the scary part was I never saw what it was the eyes were spaced on looking forward enough to be a bear but moved as though it was much taller in smooth motion as if they were floating when the animal moved I could hear it pushing though all of the foliage when the eyes disappear I pulled forward to a point I could turn around maybe a football field length away unnoticed as I was turning around there were train tracks the guy on the radio said stay there as they could see me well short ending the engineers hopped in and on the way home we're talking about how they saw a large animal that looked like the size of a bear that stood in front of their tracks as they were slowly coming to a stop but took off much too fast to be a bear and they even joked that it ran away on two legs at that speed they said exactly where I saw the creature and shivers to this day still happened when I think about it one evening I'm coming east on a Deadhead empty commuter train through La Grange Illinois where there are three road crossings about a block apart the gates activate about 30 seconds before the train occupies the crossing so as I'm approaching the middle crossing two cars are just getting across to the other side mind you there are three tracks through this location and the cars are on the far side two tracks over I'm coming into town at about 50 miles per hour and as the gates go down the second car puts on the reverse lights and proceeds to back up across all three mains and ends up bumping into the gate behind it and stops at this point the front 1/3 of the car and the fowl and it's a sure thing I'm going to hit this car so I put the train into emergency the driver realizes they're about to get hit and the woman jumps out of the car well the car was still in Reverse and when she got out the car it took off down the street and she started running after it I came to a stop recovered the air reported it to the dispatcher and then went on my way and finished out the evening it was one of the craziest near hit I've had not a trained operator but work on the railway making it safe for other people to work basically making sure the electricity won't kill you my brother my dad and I were working at around 8:00 p.m. dad noticed a small public footbridge over the railway as we were walking down the track he points it out saying he had never noticed it before and wondered what it was for once I'd lead to dense trees the other to an abandoned coal pit just as we're discussing whether or not it actually is open to the public we spot a woman on it looking down at us we realized it must be open to the public then she slowly sunk out of sight we didn't see her again we checked both sides of the bridge but she had gone no idea who she was or what she was doing TL DR creepy lady on a footbridge that she had no reason to be on foot bridge was abandoned sunk out of sight when we saw her at weaker got into an argument with his girlfriend and decided the best way to show her was to kill himself by train he stomped right out in front of us like a kid about to slam their bedroom door clung smack him at 40 miles per hour dead center of the cowcatcher we were on an empty grain train so we were stopped fairly close I walked back and my student reluctantly followed me he was laying not ten feet from the tracks just groaning and mumbling I was shocked that he still had all his limbs or that his head didn't just explode I was standing next to him and while talking to our dispatcher on the radio trying to get EMS to him cause he was miraculously alive he rolled over super quickly when he heard sirens and I can see his femur pressing against his jeans like his thaw had a raging hard-on as soon as we can see a few cops walking up he got up and ran he didn't get far but continued to fight the cops when they got up to him that student doesn't work for the RR anymore train engineer here not scary or strange just a weird experience was coming into a stop and a platform after a long straight all of a sudden I see something small in the middle of the track I slammed the emergency brakes and when I get closer I see it's a small dog without a leash something the size of a Jack Russell clearly it had run away from its owner as I spot on the platform a panicking woman running after the dog on the platform the dog was running straight at my train barking my thoughts were crap I'm going to kill someone's pet and the dog disappeared from my sight I almost didn't stomach it but I had to go out and look what's happened turned out the little rat was so little he passed underneath the train in the other end of the train the dog's owner work and the dog which had miraculously passed underneath the entire train without getting hit by the undercarriage poor thing were probably traumatized but lucky he survived I have a good friend who works on the railroad and it's not necessarily creepy but the most sad situation he told me about was when a worker got shackled up between two train cars and once that happens you're basically done when they on shackle you you bleed to death and even EMTs can stop you they called the ambulance and then his wife and he talked to his wife and cried while they unshackled the cars from him what exactly causes the blood loss like what exactly is being shackled in between two train cars basically they're pinned between the two cars and the damage is done the pressure of being pinned is a much larger scale version of when you get a cut and put pressure on it to stop the bleeding except the damage here is much more severe involving organs and large lacerations once you remove the pressure by separating the cars all the person's blood and organs and whatever else rushes out instantly depending on where the person is shackled they can live for quite some time so long as the pressure remains horrifying to say the least my dad was an engineer had numerous stories about crap he saw here are a couple randoms that come to mind they had a grisly square off with him on the track one obviously know how that ended they had a forensics team come out to identify if it was a salwar bore ran over who knows how much wildlife they were sitting in a sighting waiting for a hotshot to come through it was just outside a small town and the highway was next to the tracks my dad and his engineer assistant no.not conductor saw some mountain goat head for the road while a minivan was approaching lady driving the van was talking on her phone and apparently didn't see the goats they came out on the road and she plowed into them it was like a four wind star with a sloped nose so the hosts just rolled up and over the hood the goats then got up and ran off before the lady could even get out of her car once she did finally get out she just stood there looking around like she had no idea what she'd hit the goats were gone and her front end was all dented up my dad was an engineer most of his life he's hit at least three or four people over his career most of them homeless passed out on the tracks or with headphones on not paying attention the worst one happened when I was about 16 or so and I remember it well there was a teenage couple hanging out in a tunnel he saw them honked his horn and tried to stop the train they started running but the tunnel was pretty long in the train was coming fast the boyfriend was running first holding his girlfriend's hand and basically dragging her along with him the boyfriend ended up making it out of the tunnel just in time but his girlfriend whose hand he was holding didn't that really duct my dad up me being about the same age didn't help things I remember seeing it on the news and finding an article online about it which I saved to my computer at the time my dad got really mad and deleted it can't blame him his conductor was also an [ __ ] and kept messing with him for weeks to come banging on the front of the engine like the sound had made when her body hit really messed up I'm a conductor and I have been lucky enough to avoid anything too wild myself but I have heard a couple stories one was a full crew engineer conductor and switchman working in a small yard about an hour away from their home terminal last move of the day they had just put all their cars together and started shoving back it was a cold day lots of snow in the switchman decided he'd hop on the cars as they came by so he didn't have to walk as much buting brakes on he slipped while getting on the car and ended up getting run over at the hip the last words he ever spoke to other people were you guys ran me over on his radio he bled out before either of the other guys made it to him the other story was about a conductor riding a cut of cars down the tracks to a customer track this track runs through a pretty rough part of and you're always looking out for people near or on the tracks he comes around a bend and sees a pile of junk in the middle of the tracks no big deal as they get close the pile of junk sits up straight and looks the conductor dead in the eye this guy didn't stand a chance they soaked the train but they plowed into the guy doing about 20 miles per hour he was a complete mess when the conductor found him crumpled up like a pretzel under the second or third car somehow lived until the ambulance came but died in hospital just a little side note don't screw around with railroad equipment stay off the tracks stay off the cars everything is steel and it has zero forgiveness there are no minor accidents on the railroad I love my job as a conductor and I dread the idea that one day somebody might take the joy away by being stupid around my train former train drivers assistant from Hitchin disappear back when it was British Rail a driver and I hid account that had wandered on the tracks we were doing 60 miles per hour in a class 31 coming back from white Moor Depot and eally around 3:00 a.m. this would have been in 1987 or 1988 it bursts like an organ filled water balloon didn't do any damage to the engine but wreck the cow that's the strangest the creepiest was when I'd moved to the clerical side of things and was a ticket office supervisor at Royston station train that wasn't meant to stop between Stevenage and Cambridge pulled into the platform and stayed there after a minute or two the driver sounded the horn so I put on a HV vest and went to see him he'd hit a young man had committed suicide there's a curve a mile or so south before getting into Royston and he just decided that was the place to do it local newspaper reported he'd lost his job his family were on holiday somewhere sunny so he had nobody to talk to or vent to so he left a note and just handed it the incident inspector that came to evaluate things was an ex driver I knew John he got into the forefoot to look at the underside of the train I asked him what it looked like and he just said gristle the front of the train looked like the splashes you get when you have a nosebleed on concrete and it makes crown shaped splashes only it looked like a million nosebleeds this was 1996 I was going through a divorce at the time and it shook me up quite paramedic in the last four years I've responded to fatalities six times in two different states through work because an Amtrak trains hitting people trying to kill themselves I remember one of the workers riding at the front was telling PD and how this slightly overweight black woman walked calmly onto the tracks closed her eyes and rose her arms like she was summoning the dead they were able to slow to about 50 miles per hour before hitting her and tossing her like a rag doll turns out she was a frequently in and out of psych facilities and would get aggressive for panhandling one of the reasons this stands out to me as I remember walking up the body and the back of her head was blown open and this lady had a legit smile on her face with her eyes open I was working with a brand new EMT partner who vomited while Pee Dee and I covered the body with a nearby tarp duck and Trevor I hope he got better at dealing with dead bodies my dad is a cargo train driver so he doesn't encounter as many jumpers or accidents involving humans as a passenger train driver would the creepiest thing he ever saw wasn't on the tracks but a building nearby a small nearby town had been completely destroyed by an out-of-control bushfire I remember the ash and burnt gum leaves had traveled to our town and it was like something out of an apocalypse movie a few days later the track was cleared as good to go and my dad was on one of the first shifts in the evening the town was deserted by this point all residents were displaced as no buildings survived as he was driving through this completely charred town he saw one house that still had Christmas lights on the house was destroyed but the lights had survived and because they were solar-powered they were the only light in town I've seen a homeless man hanging from a tree with a hood on his head and his hands tied behind his back the tree was located at a stop used twice a day and mainly for high school kids it was ruled a suicide my first fatality was a man committing suicide thought he was just another idiot trying to cross the road in front of the train before it passed when he got to the tracks he turned and ran right at me my second fatality was a few days ago young girl walking too close to the edge of the platform she was staring down at her iPad with headphones on I thought she was too close I blew the whistle repeatedly put the train into emergency and as I passed her purse somehow got caught on the engine heard a thump and saw what I thought looked like a bunch of debris like if you hit a garbage can and it went flying it was her

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Id: Y1-lpkEKU1k

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 05 2019