Train track selfie, illegal and deadly.

[marylander1940]

 

http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/US/ht_trainphotodanger_le_151016_4x3_992.jpg

 

The photos showed a couple of happy kids celebrating young love in the country. The camera captured two 16 year-olds, John DeReggi, or John-John, posing with his girlfriend, dancing and jumping on empty railroad tracks in rural Maryland.

 

"He loved a thrill," Christine DeReggi, John's mother told ABC News. "He wasn't reckless but he definitely loved adventure. He loved to laugh. He loved to be a little bit scared."

 

It was all part of a photography class project to take inspirational photos filled with metaphors of youth and the pathway yet to come.

 

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/US/dangers-taking-photos-train-tracks/story?id=34533140

[gallahadesquire]

I lived three houses down from a railroad. We used to play near the tracks. Fortunately, it was dead-straight, about five miles in each direction (due west of Downtown Chicago). Being within twenty feet if one of those puppies going by at, oh, 40 MPH was enough to scare the shit out of anyone. Then again, I think we were somewhat more fearful then.

[+ deej]

I lived three houses down from a railroad. We used to play near the tracks. Fortunately, it was dead-straight, about five miles in each direction (due west of Downtown Chicago). Being within twenty feet if one of those puppies going by at, oh, 40 MPH was enough to scare the shit out of anyone. Then again, I think we were somewhat more fearful then.

 

Same here. We used to put pennies on the track and then pick em up flattened, featureless, and paper thin.

 

That said, it wasn't that long ago that fitness model Greg Plitt (sigh!) died trying to film an infomercial of some sort on a train track.

 

Pay. Attention.

[JacquesNY]

Then those 4 kids in Stand By Me movie should get tickets?

[geminibear]

The average freight train is about 1 to 1¼ miles in length (90 to 120 rail cars). When it's moving at 55 miles an hour, it can take a mile or more to stop after the locomotive engineer fully applies the emergency braking system. An 8-car passenger train moving at 80 miles an hour needs about a mile to stop.

[rvwnsd]

I lived three houses down from a railroad. We used to play near the tracks. Fortunately, it was dead-straight, about five miles in each direction (due west of Downtown Chicago). Being within twenty feet if one of those puppies going by at, oh, 40 MPH was enough to scare the shit out of anyone. Then again, I think we were somewhat more fearful then.

 

My dad, who would be 86 this year, grew up a few miles west of downtown Chicago near railroad tracks and a freight yard. He told us once how kids played on the tracks and would usually barely miss getting hit by a train. Then, a couple of kids got surprised by a train. One jumped to his death into the Chicago River (if he didn't drown the chemical soup killed him) and the other was crushed by the train. This would have occurred circa 1942 or 43. Stupid fearlessness is nothing new.

[AdamSmith]

Risks from railway electricity [graphic]:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRPOsm4PYr0