Can't figure out whats worse, kid or xing?

[MD2020]

While what "Cabman" said he did is still trespassing, and interfering with a traffic control device, and interference with interstate commerce, his actions as stated seem to be pretty different from the knucklehead in the video. For one, Cabman didn't video himself doing it (ha ha) and were more in line with what a typical curious kid might do. ...The dumb kid here was aimlessley throwing rocks at track wires. How ridiculous, just makes no sense.

Maybe the kid has it right, and I'm being too hard. Perhaps I should keep a bag of rocks on the truck, and the next time I have a power off situation, I should sling rocks at various parts of the crossing to see if it somehow recovers.

Maybe WCH should offer "Crossing recovery rocks" to sell with their disposable crossing parts?

[SirKrunch]

Isn't that how most primitive apelike species have handled what they could not comprehend?
Poke it with a stick or throw rocks at it?
Perhaps someday our little numbnuts here will also be able to eat with a utensil instead of with his hands or suckling off his mommy's teet.

Actually (MG) I'd be willing to bet a Darwin award is in Junior's future as well.

[cabman701]

The wire your talking about is a bond wire for the track circuit fyi

_DSC0470bond.jpg (113.95 KiB) Viewed 234 times

Actually, it looked somewhat like what the kid was throwing rocks at... except that it wasn't painted and it was on the inside of the tracks instead of outside.

Track wire.jpg (163.46 KiB) Viewed 235 times

And yes, I agree I was a bit of a knucklehead for doing it... but as MD2020 said, kid will be kids sometimes.

The difference is that I did what I did on my own (and didn't video it or get caught ). The kid in the YouTube video had his parents or some other adult sitting right there in their van watching him do it.... most likely even encouraging that activity.

[LARDLOGO]

So I have to admit... once I did tamper with a crossing wire. In my defense, I was only 7 or 8 years old. It was the crossing next to my grandmother's house (which is one of the signals pictured in my avatar)... but at the time they were 8 inch lights and no gates. This was back in the late 70's.

The crossing had been malfunctioning the whole day I was there... the lights were stuck on. At the time, the crossing had no bell, so it wasn't really a nuisance except that she lived on a rather busy street and cars were sometimes stopping and waiting even though there was no train in either direction. This of course pissed off the people behind them to the point they would start honking their horns to get the other cars to go.

Like the kid in the above video... I got a bit curious and walked around a bit to see what might have been going on. I noticed that one of the wires had come completely off of the track... like the weld broke or something. So, I grabbed the wire and tried to put it back in place the best I could. I must have got it on the right spot because the lights shut off! I felt like I was superman or something. I wanted to tell my parents so bad what I had accomplished, but was afraid I would get in big trouble for messing with it.

About an hour or so later a train came. I did have that brief moment of panic that I screwed something up and maybe the lights would not come on at all and somebody would die. Thankfully... they came on like they were supposed to, but the train knocked that wire back off... so of course once the train passed the lights stayed on again.

By then it was almost dark and time for us to go home and we left. Not sure how much longer it took for the signal maintainer to come out and fix it.

The wire your talking about is a bond wire for the track circuit fyi

_DSC0470bond.jpg

I own quite a few of those bonds. A BNSF guy gave them to me!

[LARDLOGO]

I caught a trespasser at Slater Road in Ferndale today. About 5 fishers got up and were walking on the tracks just as a speeding Amtrak Cascades rushed through. Nobody was hurt.

At the least, I hope the engine took all their fish while speeding by as they deserve it. They just got back on the line and continued walking like the holes they are.