Unanswered questions about Maryland train derailment which killed a U.D. student & one other young woman
Unless they were absolutely inebriated, it's still a mystery why two young college students - one from the U.D. - could not have avoided the train derailment which took their lives.
Unclear: Were they walking on the tracks, or simply near the tracks? Were they simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?
A few things in the initial accounts don't seem to add up.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong. It sounds like they were sitting on the railroad bridge. But it also sounds like they were sitting below it. It's not a very clear article.
What is it that draws college age women to railroad tracks when they have been drinking? Deaths like these have been far too frequent in Newark.
Mike from Delaware
Wed, Aug 22, 2012 11:17am
JimH: I was thinking the same thing.
JimH
Wed, Aug 22, 2012 11:35am
I just read a more recent article from the Huffington Post (not my normal source for news!). The young women were sitting on the bridge taking pictures. Unlike the WP story, the HP story quotes the conductor as saying he saw the girls as the train passed by. Contradiction number one. Contradiction number two may be that "all of a sudden" something went wrong with the brake line, causing the derailment. Did the engineer suddenly see the victims, panic, and hit the brake too hard/too fast? I'm sensing human error. Ironic to me is that this bridge is part of an old B&O line build in 1830. The bridge in Newark where many deaths/injuries occur is also a bridge that is part of the old B&O line, that is also now a freight line.
kavips
Wed, Aug 22, 2012 12:27pm
From the map it appears the girls were in their car. And in regard to Huff Post, conductors do not ride on coal trains, so that report has to be called into question.
mrpizza
Wed, Aug 22, 2012 6:51pm
Horrible, horrible tragedy.
JimH
Wed, Aug 22, 2012 9:58pm
The reports at this point agree on the number of employees on the train. The engineer and the conductor were two of the three. I agree with kavips that you do not need a conductor on a freight train of this type. But there allegedly was one aboard. And forget the map. They were sitting on the bridge and not in a car. They were drunk, taking pictures that included their toe-nail paintings. This story is not getting any better.
mrpizza
Thu, Aug 23, 2012 9:45pm
Drunk or sober, the outcome would have been the same. With or without booze, the girls would have gone there. The accident was caused by the train wrecking, not the drunk victims stumbling in front of it as happens in most cases.
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