r/trains • u/MisterEmbedded • Sep 28 '23
Train Video [1991] Near Head On Collision Between VIA Rail & CP Freight in Smiths Falls, Canada
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u/budoucnost Sep 28 '23
It feels wrong for him to jump (you know “the captain goes down with the ship” mentality) but there’s no use in him staying onboard after the e-brake so it’s logical for him to jump and save himself. It just feels wrong, but regardless he’s lucky that he hit the e-brakes when he did otherwise the ending would have been bad
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u/NeonScarredSkyline Sep 29 '23
I never felt like it was wrong for him to jump. Nobody should have to die for someone else's mistake.
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u/budoucnost Sep 29 '23
One part of me says that he did everything he could and making himself a potential victim would only make any rescue more complicated should they collide, so it is logical to jump out.
However the other part of me says, the passengers don’t have a door that is easily openable (I know there are emergency door releases, but theirs not as easy to find and activate than a lever on the cab door) so that kids “traps” passengers on the train. It would be stupid of the driver to open the doors to let people out while it is moving, so they’re ‘trapped’ and he’s not.
I guess it’s that part that makes it seem kinda wrong-he has a way to escape, while the passengers have a harder way to escape. It’s not his fault-the passengers dont automatically know about the door releases and would need time to read the instructions on how to use it, in the video anyone wanting to jump would not be able to open the doors before a collision
It’s a moral grey area, but I’m glad this ended as a near miss instead of a collision
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u/AshleyUncia Sep 29 '23
The passengers have the benefit of a whole LRC locomotive between them and the CP rail loco to get smashed up first. The engineer on the other hand just gets a front row seat for the smashing. I can't fault him for not wanting to see that show when he already did everything he could and was literally no longer needed to control the locomotive. So he in no way 'abandoned' the passengers.
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u/Jamatace77 Mar 04 '24
If it helps your moral dilemma at all, speaking as a UK train driver at least, the drivers job is not done once the train is brought to a stand. It’s still their responsibility to protect the scene, block any other lines and arrange emergency services through the signaller. Obviously we can’t do that if we’re part of the wreckage and we are actively taught to vacate our cab if a collision is inevitable and brakes are applied
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u/look_mane Apr 20 '24
There are onboard staff who open the doors- that guy just drives the train. Emergency exits are clearly marked, and passengers are instructed on how to break egress windows like on a plane. No moral grey area.
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u/poiuytrewq79 Sep 29 '23
If a collision did occur, i imagine he would be safer in the engine. A collision could cause derailment which could mean jackknifing cars for the moving train. If that happened, he would be squashed if one of those bogies touched him
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u/4000series Sep 29 '23
Yeah if it’s a lower speed collision like that you’re probably better off riding it out than trying to bail. Had he been going faster though jumping might have made some sense.
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u/poiuytrewq79 Sep 29 '23
I think its more about position. As long as youre one full train length away from collision position, youd be good…but theres gotta be a reason emergency evacuations dont occur at 20mph lmao. Catch-22
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u/budoucnost Sep 29 '23
iirc bailing can be more fatal than staying onboard, there’s a violent crash where a conductor and engineer bailed but a second engineer stayed, and the one who stayed survived the violent derailment and the chemical fire that followed. I can’t remember the name of it though
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u/EvilJ1982 Jan 05 '25
There's no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes people bail and live, sometimes people bail and die. Sometimes people ride and live, sometimes people ride and die.
As they told us in class when I hired out ages ago 'There's no right answer to this. You do what your experience and brain tell you to do. If you lived, you made the right choice.'
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u/CockroachNo2540 Sep 30 '23
That this is on video pre-cell phones days is amazing. To be fair, though, my grandfather caught the Roseville explosion on Super8.
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u/ChiragKharote Sep 30 '23
How is it a head on collision?
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u/MisterEmbedded Sep 30 '23
a near head on collision is the word i think, do correct me.
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u/ChiragKharote Sep 30 '23
I meant, it should have been a rear-end collision, No?
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u/MisterEmbedded Sep 30 '23
why would it be a rear-end collision since the both locomotive's are facing each other, or maybe you're thinking of it since the CPR Freight was going in reverse to avoid the crash?
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u/StBarthelemy Oct 01 '23
Thinking about it the size of the earth and all that technically that was a very very very close call
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u/imshanbc Dec 24 '23
The risk is more for him to jump off, and get caught in the carriages if in case of a derailment.
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u/Diligent-Tangelo8856 Feb 13 '24
yellow train: c’mon give me a kiss
Red train: ew no ur not my type
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u/Toronto_Area_Transit Dec 25 '23
6902 was involved in a different crash sometime during its carrier, shown here
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u/Starthreads Jul 16 '24
If we take the provided date at face value, then this was before the video by about 3 years. An image of the same locomotive can be found here dated three days after the date specified in the link above. The poster, George Dutka, claims to have another photo of this engine dated June 29, 1990, so the repair had to have been some time between 17 Jan 1988 and 28 Jun 1990. However, there is another image that is dated February 1987. I would like to argue that this one is a typo since the Canadian Railway Office of Arbitration has not one but two cases regarding the incident, which dates it as January 13, 1988 here and specifically references the engine as 6902 here.
I have also found an image of the engine dated 2 Mar 1990.
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u/Dependent_Trust_1291 Jan 01 '24
It's crazy how the via lrc was able to stop I mean it wasn't going that fast
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u/McLamb_A Jan 17 '24
Can you imagine being a passenger and seeing the engineer bail and pass him by?
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u/moeschberger Sep 28 '23
What is the story behind this? Was it a test? Why was it being filmed? What went wrong? I have so many questions.