Originally published at: Watch: Train barrels into pickup truck stuck on tracks in Texas (nobody was hurt) | Boing Boing
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didn’t even stop to exchange insurance information.
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Nothing stops the train in GTA.
That’s 5 GE ES44AC Gevo locomotives at the front of that intermodal consist. Each 4000 hp engine weighs around 415,000 lbs. with a top speed around 70 mph. Someone smarter than me can figure out the forces involved.
A 3 ton Ford F250 is like flicking a cotton ball out of the way.
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Was that an illegal crossing? There are no crossing barriers and the poles nearby look unrelated. The ramp thing he’s on looks like some planks nailed to railroad ties.
ETA: I think this is the aftermath of a fatal car accident and that “crossing” is actually a flat-bed trailer. The truck must have jackknifed and gotten marooned on the tracks. Yeesh.
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That’s not unusual for a crossing in rural TX, plenty of just humped dirt roads around the tracks. Even if this particular instance isn’t a real crossing.
Source: Plenty of train rides from Austin to my parents in East TX.
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The article says that the truck was involved in an accident with a minivan and “wound up” on the tracks. I don’t think it was trying to cross them.
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Yeah, that’s what I meant by “jackknifed and gotten marooned”. Judging from the damage to the suv and the distance the truck traveled, I imagine they were both moving pretty fast and the momentum of the mass of the flatbed pushed the truck forward and pushed the suv back.
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“We’re a great big rolling railroad, one that everybody knows…”
https://www.reddit.com/r/ailways/comments/r6qehn/its_illegal_to_put_coins_on_the_railroad_tracks/
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It’s a magic trick… now you see a truck… now you don’t… tada!
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2022 Ford F150 Lariat crew cab, V8, cold air, light cosmetic damage (will buff out), small gas leak, custom bodywork, ran when parked.
No joyriders, no lowballers - I know what I have!
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Thanks for the numbers! Some of us appreciate it. 
People really really don’t appreciate the energy in trains. People assume all vehicles behave pretty much like cars, or they get their knowledge of physics from movies where trains frequently “slam on the brakes” and come to a stop in some dramatic way.
Nope. A train is a force of nature of unimaginable and nearly unstoppable power. Human brains can’t even visualize those levels of kinetic energy, which leads us to doing some very stupid things around trains.
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This is what I come to BB for! You’re 2 for 2, @Carla_Sinclair, keep 'em coming!
I only recently learned how much a freight train weighs, and you’re absolutely right. I work in power generation, and I’m no stranger to big numbers. But I really can’t wrap my head around an 18,000 ton vehicle cruising at 100 km/h (60 mph).
Tangentially related: I’m really enjoying this podcast: https://danellemorton.com/city-of-the-rails/
When journalist Danelle Morton’s daughter skips town to hop trains, Morton follows her into the trainyard, and across America. In City of the Rails, the listener shadows Morton as she travels the country trying to understand what drew her daughter to this life. Her guides are the rail cops, train engineers, and hobos she meets along the way, each of them with their own extraordinary tales of the beauty and brutality of the rails.
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You’d think the Department of Public Safety would have started by calling someone to get the trains stopped.
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I always tell people to look at a train and see a cruise missile. The energy is pretty comparable, and similarly, anything that gets in front of it simply ceases to exist.
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