One more thing, in addition to "be safe, be smart, please promote finding the blue sign with the phone number and crossing code. The FIRST thing to do if an incident of some sort is blocking the tracks. There is a always a train coming and dispatch can tell the train crew to stop the train which can make the incident not get a whole lot worse. None of my friends were aware of the signs.

14:14 I have a sign on my bedroom door that says "Caution, trains have no brain, please use your own", and I absolutely love it

"Covered in grass", oh young and unwise Hyce back then. If only it was grass.

"What should I do with the carcass?"
"How good are you at barbecue?"

Remember: A fully-loaded train can take upwards of a mile to stop.
We've had a few people at the Valley Railroad attempt to 'beat the train', which was scary, and downright stupid. Sure, we're going slow, but at the same time, this is hundreds of tons that won't stop on a dime. The fastest we've stopped an engine at the speeds we run took 165 feet, and that was at a very slow speed due to poor conditions.

"Use your head, don't end up dead." ~ Norman, the old-timer that I spoke to at Strasburg back in 2019.

7:39-9:21 As my dad phrased it well, “You can’t win an argument with a train, the train will win every time.”

This is why Metro trains in Melbourne made the Dumb Ways to Die campaign.

"Don't mess around at level crossings" certainly is good advice.
The train will win every time.

That picture of the SW1500 on its side could be straight out of Derail Valley... surreal. That's 115 tons of locomotive standing up on its side.

I used to be a body-man, I dealt with more deer hits than I can count. As soon as you said hit a herd of cattle I just snapped back to power washing deer bits off of cars. Fun times lol.

"What train do when kill animal? What do with animal?".... BARBECUE, BABY!!!!!!!

Some of the stuff that I have heard of train vs are

Ship (ship lost)

A plane that was still in the air (steam train goes BOOM)

A hot air balloon (the balloon was the one that hit the train)

Two tanks ( the tanks were scrapped afterwards)

And a helicopter (helicopter did a emergency landing on the track when there was no train, train come in later)

LOL! I spent a couple of years of my military career doing physical security. The place I worked at leased a lot of the property to local ranchers who ran herds of cattle on some of the ground. One night one of my coworkers hit a cow as it stepped up out of a ditch onto the road. By the time I got there, Frank was at the back of his car spitting and coughing trying to clean out his mouth.
Apparently, the cow had been spun by the collision, broken the passenger window, and sprayed the inside of the car.

Those front end collisions were definitely FENDER BENDERS!

Thank you for sharing your these phots and stories.

There are often charities that accept road kill and make it into stew for their down-and-out clients.  They would probably have accepted a train-killed elk, depending on ambient temperature and how long prior the elk got hit.  Impact-killed meat isn't exactly great , tends to be on the gamey side, but for the people who need it, it's quite a boon.

"Its a train, its not gonna come get you" isn't something I've really thought about before

I don't think this one is gonna get Monetized LOL

your reaization that that "Grass" was sooooooooo funny 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Hoo boy do I have some stories about this stuff too lol. I only have three years at the railroad, but I've seen the aftermath from a couple train vs. car situations, two train vs. truck scenarios, a number of tree strikes, two or three deer/cows that got whacked, three smashed out draft gear pockets, one that got sideswiped, and even one that hit a grain silo. (and a partridge in a pear tree)

One of the ones that sticks out was a straight body tanker truck loaded with water that hit a locomotive at a crossing. (Yes, the truck hit the locomotive) The crew was coming down a grade with an empty stone train and saw the truck coming. They blew for the crossing and everything, but when the engineer thought the truck wouldn't be able to stop, he dumped the train and the crew hunkered down in the cab. They said it looked like a Hollywood explosion out the engineer's side window. Just a fireball taller than the locomotive. The truck hit the side of the front truck on the lead locomotive hard enough to derail the locomotive. The momentum from the rest of the train managed to derail the second truck on that locomotive as well as the first truck on the next locomotive and the second truck on that locomotive had both wheelsets with their flanges up on the rail head. The lead locomotive got far enough off the track that the front pilot was buried up to the running boards. After the dust settled a bit, the crew got out and found the driver on fire running into a nearby creek and rolling around trying to put himself out. The driver ended up getting life flighted to a hospital and his truck sat at the crossing and burned up the side of the third locomotive in the consist. If I recall correctly, they found that the truck hit the lead engine going over 45mph, I'm honestly amazed that the driver survived.

We also had one that hit a truck stuck on a grade crossing because the driver took the wrong road over the tracks and the front coupler hit the fuel tank on the side of the truck which popped like a balloon a covered the front half of the locomotive in diesel fuel. That driver ended up getting into a heap of trouble for reasons I won't get into here.

One of the scarier ones was actually a tree strike. It was an SD40-2 that hit a large tree that had been blown down in a storm and one of the limbs managed to smash the window on the front door out and managed to make it all the way through the cab a left a 2in deep dent in the electrical cabinet door about a foot from where the conductor's head would have been if he was sitting. For those that don't know, front facing windows on a locomotive have to be able to withstand a 24lb (~11kg) cinder block at about 30mph (~50kph) so that was one heck of a tree limb to just smash right through.

So yeah, I've seen some good ones too lol.

Great video as always and excellent timing for the reminder to check in on other. This is the worst time of year for those things.