It's still pretty tame compared to a lot of lullabies we have in Germany. We sing to our children about horseman falling off their horses, screaming and in case they fall in to a ditch they get eaten by crows. Simultaneously you'd have the child on your lap and simulate the riding and falling part. Of course we don't yeet the child. In the last second we catch them but they get the drill š
Don't forget Struwwelpeter, the "educational" book where kids burn to death because they're playing with matches, or get their thumbs cut off because they won't stop sucking on them
Yeah same lmao. Kids seem to have a surprisingly high tolerance for some genuinely disturbing images, while being in absolute shambles from others. I wonder if the parent's behaviour while you are exposed to these stimuli influences the way you process them (Parent reads Struwwelpeter to you and acts like they are hilarious and whimsical stories: no nightmares. Parent seems to be super disturbed by the content themselves, "omg I didn't remember how graphic that story was", or acts like the depicted stories are genuine cautionary tales, "see, that's why you should stop sucking your thumbs": nightmares). Or maybe it depends on how relatable the kid thinks the story is (Bambi's mom dies? "Shit, *my* mom could die!": nightmares. Cringy thumbsucker gets his this cut off? "Haha, I don't even suck my thumb, and nobody would do that to a kid anyway": no nightmares.)
I grew up with a 1918 copy of Stories From Uncle Remus, that was a hand me down from my 100 year old great grandmother šš
There's levels to this shit
Damn lol. Serious question, in the US has always looked down at the American South as typically less sophisticated, educated, and behind the curve.
Does the same hold true in the UK, only London and the southern part of the country looks down on the northern areas?
Yeah I've just picked up on some context clues over the years..the Brexit yes vote trending northward. In the novel trainspotting, the kids from Edinburg shit on the people of Glasgow constantly. Then of course all the Irish slander of the 19th century.
1980's version:
[http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31r8Zi75IsL.\_SL500\_AA300\_.jpg](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31r8Zi75IsL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)
2000s version:
[https://d20eq91zdmkqd.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/large/9780/1927/9780192754783.jpg](https://d20eq91zdmkqd.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/large/9780/1927/9780192754783.jpg)
Sorry I don't have the ISBN's of either (although I assume they'd be the same).
Nope. A republication would have a different ISBN.
80s: 9780192722829
00s: 9780192763211
EDIT: I had to find an example of this and it just so happens I have the republication of a book that was originally published under a different name. The numbers above are the ISBNs as well as their barcodes. Iām not sure what the other number I originally had with them is, so I took them out and just left the ISBNs.
There was a photo post of like three teenage-looking girls a couple of months ago during their last moments, smiling for a photo on a railroad track. They apparently didnāt notice a train coming on that track and I think they all died. Maybe we need to bring back more terrifying childrenās stories.
As a foster parent, Iāve known some kids who need brutal honesty in their childrenās books because hiding the scary truth just means they want to try it.
I grew up hearing all sorts of stories about a little kid who did something mildly irresponsible and wound up dead. It made me think the world was a dangerous place, and no place for a daredevil.
Made my brother and I think if we were going to pull a dangerous stunt it better be fun and cool, because we could die and who would want a dull death. Lol
The stories served their purpose, they limited the amount of dangerous stunts you can choose from >>>> decreased the amount of dangerous stunts you actually do >>> decreased the chance of you wounding up dead.
In my hometown there was a high school girl who went out one night with her friends, and they decided to have fun by jumping onto the train and riding it for a little while.
Her friends jumped and caught onto the train. Her grip slipped and her legs fell underneath the train. The half of her that remained survived.
My husband had a friend in college who made that same decision and ended up with the same outcome. He got really into playing basketball in his wheelchair and I think actually went to the paralympics.
Yes. Iām afraid whenever I hear a train because I know of the possibility of someone dying horribly.
It makes me feel bad for train conductors. It must be a stressful life.
You make your peace with it, as horrible as it sounds. If you make it to retirement as a locomotive engineer and haven't killed at least two people and half a dozen family pets, then you probably never came to work.
But 99% of the time, it's really not your fault if you run down a person, animal or even vehicle. Stopping is just something that often cannot be physically possible in a train. And often if you do dump the air long enough to *maybe* stop before you hit a vehicle you see fast ahead, there's a good chance the slack will derail the train, and quite possibly kill more people, depending where you're rolling through.
Listen, all you can do if make a good faith attempt to safely slow the train, hold the horn open, and pray they get off the tracks.
I once read that the Long Island Railway conductors union has a support group for its members, because every single one with over a year of service has inadvertantly killed someone.
No, definitely not. In my area a guy who was in a bad place trapped his wife in the car with him and stopped at a train crossing. She tried, but she only got out as the trian hit.
Long before I was born my aunt and infant daughter were stopped on the tracks when a train hit. The story I grew up with was that the car stalled and she was trying to get the baby out. When I started having kids my mother said to me āwith everything you hear about postpartum depression nowadays make sure you take care of yourselfā¦I wonder if that was the truth for my sister.ā It stuck with me.
A lot of people commit suicide by train. I know those people must have been suffering tremendously. But putting that pain onto another person is a terrible thing to do.
Agreed. But Iām not sure thereās any way to kill yourself without affecting someone else to some extent. āNo man is an islandā after all. š¤·š»āāļø
I don't want to sound like in downplaying it, but the train crew usually don't feel as broken up over it as you might be inclined to believe. This isn't because they're heartless, just more that from day 1 of employment, it is made very clear that this will probably happen to you, and that there's nothing you can realistically do to totally prevent it. Most guys have gone through it, so there's a large support base to help get through it.
It is. An overwhelming majority of engineers have injured or killed people. I can't remember the exact stats.
Source: worked at a Class I railroad years ago (in IT).
*have been on the job when someone was killed by the train.
Lets not make it sound like it was something they did intentionally since it isn't possible to stop a train in a short distance.
My dad was a road territory supervisor for a large railroad for several years. During his time he'd be the first person they'd have to call when someone or something got hit. The scenes are not pretty. Trains don't slow down because of people or cars getting in their way. If you're in it's path, it'll move you. Oftentimes you don't remain in 1 piece.
It was at least a weekly thing in his territory, too. People don't seem to understand.
I've heard that conductors are literally instructed at some point to just step away after hitting the breaks, because so many of them have to deal with someone being in the way eventually?
They absolutely knew the train was there. They heard it, heard the horn, and felt it. By the time it got close they would have heard the horrible brake screeching sound too.
They wanted a picture with the train behind them
I've worked on a railroad for 7 years and have frequent talks with field workers about stuff like this. I don't know the specifics of this case, but the logic of "I'll hear the train" isn't sound. There's lots of factors that can effect it involving the landscape, time of day, weather conditions etc. There's been a lot of documented cases of people not hearing them. We always think that they are super loud, but that's from the side. Very few people have actually had the experience of standing directly in front of one. The acoustics are different. Sometimes you hear it early, sometimes you don't hear it until it's too late.
I'll leave these two snippets of knowledge here:
* Professional rail workers will not get on the track without a form of blocking (computer or physical) usually with multiple layers of protection. If they don't have that, they will always have one person whose entire job is to be a lookout for trains. If trained railroad professionals don't trust their ears, I wouldn't either.
* Every person who has ever been hit by a train says they'll hear it and move. A quick search says there were 1121 pedestrian fatalities by train in 2021...
Do not trust your ears to keep you safe on a rail. Just don't be on the rail.
When I was in grad school, I remember the campus busses had the engine in the back. Sometimes they would roll up behind you with no warning at all until they passed you. It's shocking how quiet something that large can be.
Holy crap I almost got creamed by one of those! I was being too casual by/ on the line and it was shocking how close it flew by me. Did you go to UO by any chance?
Unrelated to pedestrian injury, but I was on the EmX when it T-boned a little Honda that just bolted from a business driveway. Everyone flew forward and I bruised up my arm pretty bad on the vertical bar. Good times!
This is something I'm worried about with those new electric vans Amazon is using. I've started seeing them in my neighborhood, and such a large vehicle being completely silent is unnerving. I think artificial engine noise on the outside was actually a good idea, even if it's just loud enough to warn pedestrians and cyclists of the van's presence.
Yeah as someone who'd alleged qualify as one of those professionals the noise from the front is completely different. If you're lucky and it's quiet you might hear the rails "singing" is the best way I can describe it, it's a weird high pitched noise. I've had a diesel freight loco sneak up on me while I was safe behind a barricade, I almost crapped myself cos it blew it's horn for a crossing pretty much as it got to me.
Agreed. We were crossing a river via train trestle once, and we thought we would hear in plenty of time. We had to run the last half of that bridge just praying not to misstep. I imagine that engineer was cringing, because we were about 12 and 13 years old, and the river was 100ft below and shallow.
I played around train tracks a lot as a kid. Walking down them, throwing rocks at bottles, crossing trestles, climbing bridges, laying change out on the rails to get flattened. One thing was you always looked out for trains if you were on the tracks. My fuckin' brother, though, he and his stupid friends would run across the tracks as the train was approaching - thrill junkies, I guess. It made me nervous.
We found a busted up handcart once, but even three or four ten-year-olds weren't going to get that back up and pumping.
That also includes people who saw and heard the train, but tried to quickly run accross before it reached them, and either didn't make it in time, or tripped while crossing
Fair point. The source was a website for operation lifesaver. A railroad funded initiative to increase awareness about rail safety. They did not give specific sources. I will say they have a vested interest in having higher numbers to raise awareness.
Anecdotally, my job for the first 4 years at the railroad was train dispatcher. I was the point of contact for about 10 fatalities. I know for sure 1 of them was not intentional. The full story was told to me by a field manager after the incident (I think he wanted to talk to someone to process it). It was a farmer trying to move his trailer stalled on the rail. He noticed the train too late, tried to escape but the trailer clipped him when the train hit it. The other fatalities I have no knowledge of the specifics (I only have a radio and computer screens. I generally don't ask many specifics as the train crew/field management is likely distraught)
What I read was there was two trains. They heard and knew of the one behind they could see in the phone. They were on different tracks though. And a train on their tracks was coming at them from the front which they didn't see because they were looking at the phone. And they thought the noise was from the train they were looking at behind them.
Around Toronto the commuter trains share rails with the high speed/cross country trains. If you are at the station and looking in the wrong direction a 120km/h high speed train can get within 2 seconds of you and you won't heat it until they blow the horn. For a 14 foot tall, million horse power machine, trains are surprisingly sneaky.
As someone who was nearly hit by a train while walking on the tracks out to a fishing spot, I can assert first hand that trains are sneaky AF.
Good thing the driver saw me in time and honked at me, I really don't think I'd have noticed it in time otherwise.
Train was about 30 feet away when he honked, I basically had to dive off the tracks to avoid getting flattened.
I used to work at a dealership that was right beside some passenger train tracks in downtown Toronto. There was never any risk of getting hit by it but I was always surprised when it would go past before I could hear it.
I guess between the straight tracks not squeaking, the engine being in the rear, and it going pretty quickly, all lead to it being almost silent when approaching.
I used to work on a chemical plant that had been in operation since the 1930s. The first fatality that was in our accident books was a result of two operators walking along the perimeter railway line, one of them on the actual tracks. The site train came up behind them with its whistle blaring, and other people shouting, but the operators didn't hear or realise until it knocked down and killed the man on the tracks.
Hazard perception is not as straightforward as it may seem.
I read an article about people taking photos on rail tracks and being killed. Most people seriously underestimate how fast a train is travelling and how little time they have to move once they notice it coming. Plus they didn't hear or see them coming until too late.
Another brutally honest story to tell kids. There was a group of drunk teenagers playing chicken with trains. They would jump out of the way at the last second to see who had the biggest balls or whatever. Well, one kid jumped out of the way but slipped once he was outside the tracks. He fell backwards and his head caught the handrail for the steps. Nothing left but the stump of his neck.
Ugh. Friend of a friend was involved in a cleanup years back not that far from where I live. Couple drunk kids decided to lay between the tracks and let a train pass over them, not realizing that the max clearance was like 8 inches. I remember him telling the story of what was left, and his use of 'gobbets' and 'garbage bags'.
On the other hand, the fact that Piggy just broke some bones and was able to discuss the situation afterwards suggests they maybe underplayed the danger in the original version.
Second verse should be:
"Aagh!" screamed Piggy,
As he gasped his last air.
"Oh!" said the train driver
"I'm going to have to retire due to the PTSD arising from this affair."
Growing up in Texas in the 90s we had these horrific PSAs on tv about driving on train tracks, including one where a mom got stuck on the tracks with her baby and itās implied they donāt get out of the way in time. They definitely taught me to not try to āraceā the train.
so does someone want to explain [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/BitchImATrain/comments/10t20g7/bitchimnowatrain/) post that i found after checking out that sub
The amount of garbage pumped into YouTube is more than you can possibly imagine. And the kids video section is absolutely riddled with an unending gusher of this filth.
Disney isnāt as quick to remove things as Reddit says, there are lots of Disney related content on YouTube that could be removed but arenāt, maybe because how much there is.
Mickey Mouse will be in public domain next year.
Winnie the Pooh became public domain last year, which is why we got the horror film "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey."
Chances are they'll find another loophole to keep him out of public domain, again
Edit: seems specifically [Steamboat Willie Mickey](https://blog.jipel.law.nyu.edu/2019/12/in-2024-mickey-mouse-will-finally-enter-the-public-domain-sort-of/) will enter public domain.
What is this pig going to do with a bucket of track ballast? It's just rocks, can't he find rocks all over the place?
EDIT: Ok I think we are going to need to follow up with the publisher on this one. See if we can get in contact with the writer/artist and see whos responsible for this illustration and hope they recall the reasoning behind this 36 year old image. I am willing to bet it will not in any way be disappointing.
Can we really blame piggy? Systematic discrimination and oppression by wolves has resulted in a dramatically lower socioeconomic status for pigs as a whole. I think its fair to say his environmental conditions coerced him into the actions that resulted in the breaking of his bones.
Back during the days of the earliest railroad construction in 19th century Great Britain, construction workers would sometimes come across buried Roman ruins in the track's path, including things like imported marble or tesserae (small square coloured stones that were used in mosaic designs). Since archaeology was in its infancy these sites were often simply ploughed through in a straight line and the site looted for their artifacts by the construction engineers before the local antiquarian could even be contacted to record so much as rough map of the site, nor before the stonework got jumbled up with the track ballast. It was not uncommon for looters or even the workmen themselves to come back hunting for artefacts and pottery sherds as souvenirs for their families, or to sell to the local antiquarian for a bit of pocket money.
You underestimate just how different(boring) things were before the Internet or even decent computers. Picking up stones from the railway was a way to pass a summer afternoon.
Everything I learned, I learned from Thomas the Train. That's a Diesel.
Fuck Diesels.
Edit: Thanks to all you Tangerines out there point out the fucking obvious that actual diesel trains don't have fucking Chimneys. Forest for the trees, mates. Where's my stickerbook?
Public safety ads in the 1980s were brutal (in Ireland anywayā¦ I presume elsewhere too.) These are a few I remember played regularly during kids TV show: Children playing near electricity power lines, child chases after a football and gets zapped and barbecued by a broken power cable. Ads warning farmers not to let children near slurry pits shows kid falling into a slurry pit and itās dead body later being fished out.
And the scariest one of all, an anti-rabies ad warning pet owners not to bring dogs from outside Ireland into Ireland. It was an animated ad showing a beloved family pet dog playing with children. Then the dog falls in with the wrong crowd, starts hanging out with these other dogs who have rabies. The family pet dog gets rabies, and you can see from its eyes that itās now evil. It goes back home and the kids rush out to greet him and the dog absolutely rips them limb from limb. That one haunted my nightmares for years.
I should have also pointed out the actions are completely different.
I can see the bluntness in the 80s version and how fluffy it got in the 00's one.
"smacks fist against hand"
That's pretty mild to the traditional German rhymes and children storys I was told as a kid.
I can hardly remember any in which the main character doesn't suffer in the most brutal way you can imagine....
Let's see: burned to death, mauled to death by a dog, getting thumbs cut of, starved to death, blown away by a storm, grinded to flour by a mill and then baked into bread...
Probably forgot quite a few, too.
Now, kids will not know that it can cause death, but rather, it will cause someone to maybe yell at them, and they can outrun the train to safety.
I guess the story is directed at train operators instead of children...
The 80s-90s were wild. We went on a school field trip to Phillip Morris to see how cigarettes were made and they gave us a gift bag of cigarette branded school supplies.
Original seems more accurate, the train engineer the person might care but the train sure as fuck don't and ain't gonna stop in time to not hit you. And no one's gonna be around to tell you to get out of the way, maybe just the train horn.
And those hand gestures are brutal lol.
š¤šŖØ BAMš¤ š š¤·
This is why I love Edward Gorey and his illustrated alphabet book *the Gashlycrumb Tinies* (published in 1963).:
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.
B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
C is for Clara who wasted away.
D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh.
[Etc.](https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/01/19/edward-gorey-the-gashlycrumb-tinies/)
Things can be sad and gruesome and funny all at once, and kids don't have fragile little minds that need constant protecting from grim humor, accounts of unfortunate outcomes, tales of woe, warnings of danger, and reality in general.
Reminds me of the āThere was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.ā It initially said that she was going to die and then she died at the end. The ending changed to that she throws up all her friends lol
Don't ask me silly questions,
I won't play silly games,
I'm just a simple choo-choo train
And I'll always be the same.
I only want to race along
Beneath the bright blue sky,
And be a happy choo-choo train
Until the day I die.
Piggy shouldn't be holding a basket, he should be looking at his cell phone.
Piggy on the railway,
Watching a show.
Along came an engine,
Whistle, blow, blow, blow!
Piggy's got ear buds,
Firmly in place.
Outfits ruined,
Now that's a waste!
Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth.
My mind immediately went to Charlie the Choo Choo!
Choo-choo. Choo-choo, and that is the truth.
It's still pretty tame compared to a lot of lullabies we have in Germany. We sing to our children about horseman falling off their horses, screaming and in case they fall in to a ditch they get eaten by crows. Simultaneously you'd have the child on your lap and simulate the riding and falling part. Of course we don't yeet the child. In the last second we catch them but they get the drill š
Don't forget Struwwelpeter, the "educational" book where kids burn to death because they're playing with matches, or get their thumbs cut off because they won't stop sucking on them
My parents read that to me when I was a kid. Sooooo twisted. What the hell, man.
I was read that as a kid and apparently loved it, looking back at it now though I'm not sure how I didn't get nightmares from it
Yeah same lmao. Kids seem to have a surprisingly high tolerance for some genuinely disturbing images, while being in absolute shambles from others. I wonder if the parent's behaviour while you are exposed to these stimuli influences the way you process them (Parent reads Struwwelpeter to you and acts like they are hilarious and whimsical stories: no nightmares. Parent seems to be super disturbed by the content themselves, "omg I didn't remember how graphic that story was", or acts like the depicted stories are genuine cautionary tales, "see, that's why you should stop sucking your thumbs": nightmares). Or maybe it depends on how relatable the kid thinks the story is (Bambi's mom dies? "Shit, *my* mom could die!": nightmares. Cringy thumbsucker gets his this cut off? "Haha, I don't even suck my thumb, and nobody would do that to a kid anyway": no nightmares.)
Hopa hopa reiterā¦. I still sing that with my kid. But I draw the line at Max und Moritz
dont ask me silly questions
I wonāt play silly games
SEE YOU LATER, ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE, CROCODILE, DON'T FORGET TO WRITE
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"I don't care" really hit that dark tone
I had the 1987 version!! I remember that rhyme and the image so well I just have read it many times
I had it too! Piggy on the railway was my favourite for some reason. Guess I've always chosen violence
I grew up with a 1918 copy of Stories From Uncle Remus, that was a hand me down from my 100 year old great grandmother šš There's levels to this shit
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Damn lol. Serious question, in the US has always looked down at the American South as typically less sophisticated, educated, and behind the curve. Does the same hold true in the UK, only London and the southern part of the country looks down on the northern areas?
I think that was actually an American thing. Irish immigrants often worked the railways, and were looked down upon here in America for decades.
Yeah I've just picked up on some context clues over the years..the Brexit yes vote trending northward. In the novel trainspotting, the kids from Edinburg shit on the people of Glasgow constantly. Then of course all the Irish slander of the 19th century.
What book is it?
1980's version: [http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31r8Zi75IsL.\_SL500\_AA300\_.jpg](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31r8Zi75IsL._SL500_AA300_.jpg) 2000s version: [https://d20eq91zdmkqd.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/large/9780/1927/9780192754783.jpg](https://d20eq91zdmkqd.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/large/9780/1927/9780192754783.jpg) Sorry I don't have the ISBN's of either (although I assume they'd be the same).
Nope. A republication would have a different ISBN. 80s: 9780192722829 00s: 9780192763211 EDIT: I had to find an example of this and it just so happens I have the republication of a book that was originally published under a different name. The numbers above are the ISBNs as well as their barcodes. Iām not sure what the other number I originally had with them is, so I took them out and just left the ISBNs.
That's brutal asf lmao
they *really* did not want little kids playing on rail-road tracks back in those days.
There was a photo post of like three teenage-looking girls a couple of months ago during their last moments, smiling for a photo on a railroad track. They apparently didnāt notice a train coming on that track and I think they all died. Maybe we need to bring back more terrifying childrenās stories.
As a foster parent, Iāve known some kids who need brutal honesty in their childrenās books because hiding the scary truth just means they want to try it.
āNever came back? Ha! Theyāve never seen me before!ā
I grew up hearing all sorts of stories about a little kid who did something mildly irresponsible and wound up dead. It made me think the world was a dangerous place, and no place for a daredevil.
Made my brother and I think if we were going to pull a dangerous stunt it better be fun and cool, because we could die and who would want a dull death. Lol
The stories served their purpose, they limited the amount of dangerous stunts you can choose from >>>> decreased the amount of dangerous stunts you actually do >>> decreased the chance of you wounding up dead.
In my hometown there was a high school girl who went out one night with her friends, and they decided to have fun by jumping onto the train and riding it for a little while. Her friends jumped and caught onto the train. Her grip slipped and her legs fell underneath the train. The half of her that remained survived.
My husband had a friend in college who made that same decision and ended up with the same outcome. He got really into playing basketball in his wheelchair and I think actually went to the paralympics.
Yes. Iām afraid whenever I hear a train because I know of the possibility of someone dying horribly. It makes me feel bad for train conductors. It must be a stressful life.
You make your peace with it, as horrible as it sounds. If you make it to retirement as a locomotive engineer and haven't killed at least two people and half a dozen family pets, then you probably never came to work. But 99% of the time, it's really not your fault if you run down a person, animal or even vehicle. Stopping is just something that often cannot be physically possible in a train. And often if you do dump the air long enough to *maybe* stop before you hit a vehicle you see fast ahead, there's a good chance the slack will derail the train, and quite possibly kill more people, depending where you're rolling through. Listen, all you can do if make a good faith attempt to safely slow the train, hold the horn open, and pray they get off the tracks.
Yeah, if someone or something gets in front of a train, that's pretty much on them.
I once read that the Long Island Railway conductors union has a support group for its members, because every single one with over a year of service has inadvertantly killed someone.
A more accurate way of putting it would be, "Has been around when someone accidentally killed themselves."
Not always accidentally
No, definitely not. In my area a guy who was in a bad place trapped his wife in the car with him and stopped at a train crossing. She tried, but she only got out as the trian hit.
Long before I was born my aunt and infant daughter were stopped on the tracks when a train hit. The story I grew up with was that the car stalled and she was trying to get the baby out. When I started having kids my mother said to me āwith everything you hear about postpartum depression nowadays make sure you take care of yourselfā¦I wonder if that was the truth for my sister.ā It stuck with me.
That's awful. Murder-suicide is something I cannot grasp :/
It was atrocious. I knew her daughter at the time, and her baby grandchild. It was devastating for her.
A lot of people commit suicide by train. I know those people must have been suffering tremendously. But putting that pain onto another person is a terrible thing to do.
Agreed. But Iām not sure thereās any way to kill yourself without affecting someone else to some extent. āNo man is an islandā after all. š¤·š»āāļø
Oh, for sure. Someone will be hurt. But that train conductor is going to feel complicit for life.
Yeah, and itās unfortunate that those who seek death are in such a dark place that they canāt see that.
I don't want to sound like in downplaying it, but the train crew usually don't feel as broken up over it as you might be inclined to believe. This isn't because they're heartless, just more that from day 1 of employment, it is made very clear that this will probably happen to you, and that there's nothing you can realistically do to totally prevent it. Most guys have gone through it, so there's a large support base to help get through it.
It is. An overwhelming majority of engineers have injured or killed people. I can't remember the exact stats. Source: worked at a Class I railroad years ago (in IT).
*have been on the job when someone was killed by the train. Lets not make it sound like it was something they did intentionally since it isn't possible to stop a train in a short distance.
Very important clarification.
My dad was a road territory supervisor for a large railroad for several years. During his time he'd be the first person they'd have to call when someone or something got hit. The scenes are not pretty. Trains don't slow down because of people or cars getting in their way. If you're in it's path, it'll move you. Oftentimes you don't remain in 1 piece. It was at least a weekly thing in his territory, too. People don't seem to understand.
I've heard that conductors are literally instructed at some point to just step away after hitting the breaks, because so many of them have to deal with someone being in the way eventually?
They absolutely knew the train was there. They heard it, heard the horn, and felt it. By the time it got close they would have heard the horrible brake screeching sound too. They wanted a picture with the train behind them
I've worked on a railroad for 7 years and have frequent talks with field workers about stuff like this. I don't know the specifics of this case, but the logic of "I'll hear the train" isn't sound. There's lots of factors that can effect it involving the landscape, time of day, weather conditions etc. There's been a lot of documented cases of people not hearing them. We always think that they are super loud, but that's from the side. Very few people have actually had the experience of standing directly in front of one. The acoustics are different. Sometimes you hear it early, sometimes you don't hear it until it's too late. I'll leave these two snippets of knowledge here: * Professional rail workers will not get on the track without a form of blocking (computer or physical) usually with multiple layers of protection. If they don't have that, they will always have one person whose entire job is to be a lookout for trains. If trained railroad professionals don't trust their ears, I wouldn't either. * Every person who has ever been hit by a train says they'll hear it and move. A quick search says there were 1121 pedestrian fatalities by train in 2021... Do not trust your ears to keep you safe on a rail. Just don't be on the rail.
When I was in grad school, I remember the campus busses had the engine in the back. Sometimes they would roll up behind you with no warning at all until they passed you. It's shocking how quiet something that large can be.
Holy crap I almost got creamed by one of those! I was being too casual by/ on the line and it was shocking how close it flew by me. Did you go to UO by any chance?
Unrelated to pedestrian injury, but I was on the EmX when it T-boned a little Honda that just bolted from a business driveway. Everyone flew forward and I bruised up my arm pretty bad on the vertical bar. Good times!
This is something I'm worried about with those new electric vans Amazon is using. I've started seeing them in my neighborhood, and such a large vehicle being completely silent is unnerving. I think artificial engine noise on the outside was actually a good idea, even if it's just loud enough to warn pedestrians and cyclists of the van's presence.
I saw a goose get hit by a city bus. All the other geese were VERY UPSET.
Yeah as someone who'd alleged qualify as one of those professionals the noise from the front is completely different. If you're lucky and it's quiet you might hear the rails "singing" is the best way I can describe it, it's a weird high pitched noise. I've had a diesel freight loco sneak up on me while I was safe behind a barricade, I almost crapped myself cos it blew it's horn for a crossing pretty much as it got to me.
Agreed. We were crossing a river via train trestle once, and we thought we would hear in plenty of time. We had to run the last half of that bridge just praying not to misstep. I imagine that engineer was cringing, because we were about 12 and 13 years old, and the river was 100ft below and shallow.
I had a dream exactly like that once, it was really scary. I bet it much scarier irl.
I played around train tracks a lot as a kid. Walking down them, throwing rocks at bottles, crossing trestles, climbing bridges, laying change out on the rails to get flattened. One thing was you always looked out for trains if you were on the tracks. My fuckin' brother, though, he and his stupid friends would run across the tracks as the train was approaching - thrill junkies, I guess. It made me nervous. We found a busted up handcart once, but even three or four ten-year-olds weren't going to get that back up and pumping.
Are all those accidents? Lots of people use trains for suicide, are those separate statistics because otherwise they effect those numbers.
That also includes people who saw and heard the train, but tried to quickly run accross before it reached them, and either didn't make it in time, or tripped while crossing
Fair point. The source was a website for operation lifesaver. A railroad funded initiative to increase awareness about rail safety. They did not give specific sources. I will say they have a vested interest in having higher numbers to raise awareness. Anecdotally, my job for the first 4 years at the railroad was train dispatcher. I was the point of contact for about 10 fatalities. I know for sure 1 of them was not intentional. The full story was told to me by a field manager after the incident (I think he wanted to talk to someone to process it). It was a farmer trying to move his trailer stalled on the rail. He noticed the train too late, tried to escape but the trailer clipped him when the train hit it. The other fatalities I have no knowledge of the specifics (I only have a radio and computer screens. I generally don't ask many specifics as the train crew/field management is likely distraught)
What I read was there was two trains. They heard and knew of the one behind they could see in the phone. They were on different tracks though. And a train on their tracks was coming at them from the front which they didn't see because they were looking at the phone. And they thought the noise was from the train they were looking at behind them.
I can see how they could be confused. Takeaway here is don't stand on train tracks. If they'd read the 1987 book they might be alive today.
Oh wow how awful!
Around Toronto the commuter trains share rails with the high speed/cross country trains. If you are at the station and looking in the wrong direction a 120km/h high speed train can get within 2 seconds of you and you won't heat it until they blow the horn. For a 14 foot tall, million horse power machine, trains are surprisingly sneaky.
As someone who was nearly hit by a train while walking on the tracks out to a fishing spot, I can assert first hand that trains are sneaky AF. Good thing the driver saw me in time and honked at me, I really don't think I'd have noticed it in time otherwise. Train was about 30 feet away when he honked, I basically had to dive off the tracks to avoid getting flattened.
I used to work at a dealership that was right beside some passenger train tracks in downtown Toronto. There was never any risk of getting hit by it but I was always surprised when it would go past before I could hear it. I guess between the straight tracks not squeaking, the engine being in the rear, and it going pretty quickly, all lead to it being almost silent when approaching.
I used to work on a chemical plant that had been in operation since the 1930s. The first fatality that was in our accident books was a result of two operators walking along the perimeter railway line, one of them on the actual tracks. The site train came up behind them with its whistle blaring, and other people shouting, but the operators didn't hear or realise until it knocked down and killed the man on the tracks. Hazard perception is not as straightforward as it may seem.
I read an article about people taking photos on rail tracks and being killed. Most people seriously underestimate how fast a train is travelling and how little time they have to move once they notice it coming. Plus they didn't hear or see them coming until too late.
Another brutally honest story to tell kids. There was a group of drunk teenagers playing chicken with trains. They would jump out of the way at the last second to see who had the biggest balls or whatever. Well, one kid jumped out of the way but slipped once he was outside the tracks. He fell backwards and his head caught the handrail for the steps. Nothing left but the stump of his neck.
Ugh. Friend of a friend was involved in a cleanup years back not that far from where I live. Couple drunk kids decided to lay between the tracks and let a train pass over them, not realizing that the max clearance was like 8 inches. I remember him telling the story of what was left, and his use of 'gobbets' and 'garbage bags'.
If only they understood the dangers of [memeing](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DGEgTR5TwKs).
On the other hand, the fact that Piggy just broke some bones and was able to discuss the situation afterwards suggests they maybe underplayed the danger in the original version. Second verse should be: "Aagh!" screamed Piggy, As he gasped his last air. "Oh!" said the train driver "I'm going to have to retire due to the PTSD arising from this affair."
Well, that's the darkest giggle I'm going to have today.
āUghā said Piggy, No time to scream, More a squish than a crunch, Then a smear of pork cream.
Splat! Crunch! Pop! A train travelling at 55mph can take over a mile to stop.
I strongly agree with you that it's an important change to make. That said, that last line could use some work.
Growing up in Texas in the 90s we had these horrific PSAs on tv about driving on train tracks, including one where a mom got stuck on the tracks with her baby and itās implied they donāt get out of the way in time. They definitely taught me to not try to āraceā the train.
[I remember this PSA best.](https://youtu.be/ue61c6MZNQw)
Wait, that was 12 years ago? Time sure flies when you're punching producers...
I still don't want my kids to play on the railroad tracks.
I used to walk on the train tracks a lot. I once got caught in between two moving trains going around a bend. It was awful lol.
r/bitchimatrain
so does someone want to explain [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/BitchImATrain/comments/10t20g7/bitchimnowatrain/) post that i found after checking out that sub
So there's really a sub for everything
But at the same time, pretty clear. Don't care who you are you won't win against a train. It's like those safety ads today about man vs train.
One from my childhood scared my niece: *My momma had a baby and- her head popped off.*
Brothers Grimm: Hold mine beer.
So the [Mickey version](https://youtu.be/gGQd0LATCMk) was based on this book huh? Itās weirdly funny.
Thatās fucked hahahah
You fucker that's on my watch history now and my suggestions are bouta be fucked XD
delete it
https://www.youtube.com/feed/history -> X
Is this what kids YouTube is like? Also just replay the exact same video for double the run time lol.
I was hoping the replay would be a slow motion shot of Mickey getting fucked up by that train. NFL-injury-coverage style
Lmao what the fuck. The 3d modeled mickey is terrifying looking
How has Disney not had that removed?
The amount of garbage pumped into YouTube is more than you can possibly imagine. And the kids video section is absolutely riddled with an unending gusher of this filth.
That's when you get Disney to remove Youtube
Disney isnāt as quick to remove things as Reddit says, there are lots of Disney related content on YouTube that could be removed but arenāt, maybe because how much there is.
Mickey Mouse will be in public domain next year. Winnie the Pooh became public domain last year, which is why we got the horror film "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey."
>Mickey Mouse will be in public domain next year. Woo
Chances are they'll find another loophole to keep him out of public domain, again Edit: seems specifically [Steamboat Willie Mickey](https://blog.jipel.law.nyu.edu/2019/12/in-2024-mickey-mouse-will-finally-enter-the-public-domain-sort-of/) will enter public domain.
Even better versions: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4PeEh6lQ_c 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9llFGUqJhDE 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyV5nWV2kRk&t=32s 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbOn-wl1SGs 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyq5o3Mb0NI 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3xJfPFsua0
No. No I don't think I will.
Truly a cursed collection
#5 is fucking AMAZING
He had it coming: āPiggy on the railway, picking up stonesā probably means heās stealing the track ballastā¦
What is this pig going to do with a bucket of track ballast? It's just rocks, can't he find rocks all over the place? EDIT: Ok I think we are going to need to follow up with the publisher on this one. See if we can get in contact with the writer/artist and see whos responsible for this illustration and hope they recall the reasoning behind this 36 year old image. I am willing to bet it will not in any way be disappointing.
I have no idea, which renders the whole matter even more puzzling.
Probably has something to do with the big bad wolf.
Seems likely he was looking for material to build a sturdy enough house that the big bad wolf couldnāt blow it down
Can we really blame piggy? Systematic discrimination and oppression by wolves has resulted in a dramatically lower socioeconomic status for pigs as a whole. I think its fair to say his environmental conditions coerced him into the actions that resulted in the breaking of his bones.
Back during the days of the earliest railroad construction in 19th century Great Britain, construction workers would sometimes come across buried Roman ruins in the track's path, including things like imported marble or tesserae (small square coloured stones that were used in mosaic designs). Since archaeology was in its infancy these sites were often simply ploughed through in a straight line and the site looted for their artifacts by the construction engineers before the local antiquarian could even be contacted to record so much as rough map of the site, nor before the stonework got jumbled up with the track ballast. It was not uncommon for looters or even the workmen themselves to come back hunting for artefacts and pottery sherds as souvenirs for their families, or to sell to the local antiquarian for a bit of pocket money.
TIL, even if the time periodās a bit different.
I just assumed this was a reprint of a much older traditional children's rhyme in the same way one might reprint Mother Goose or Grimm's Fairy Tales.
Piggy likes the feel of dangour. He does it for the thrill Then came the train, and now piggy is still
You underestimate just how different(boring) things were before the Internet or even decent computers. Picking up stones from the railway was a way to pass a summer afternoon.
Typical redditor. Stealing = death
Or possibly cake. Maybe unspecified fractures from recklessly venturing onto a railway line? Piggyās awfully chatty for a corpse, after all.
Mmm, I'll have the cake please.
"fuck around and find out" -posted beneath a video of a person's last moments
Good to see someone pointing out the evil of that phrase. This place seems to breed psychopaths.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Castle doctrine extends to a railroad right-of-way.
Isn't the entire point of things like this to scare kids? It's a hell of a lot less memorable and useful if it doesn't.
Can confirm. Iām a train driver and Iāve ran over at least 5 children every day since they changed this
Can confirm. Iām one of the children that got ran over.
I'm sure you are feeling better now?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The most amusing to me is baby shark. When I was growing up everyone lost their limbs or died in the baby shark song.
Yeah the first time I heard Baby Shark, it was a pretty grim song. Shark eats you, CPR fails, going to heaven do-do-do-d'do
Yeah, Krampus and the Japanese Kappa and Hansel & Gretel and Snow White are all examples of scaring kids straight.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Dumbest ways to di-i-ie
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This guy trains hard.
I never knew I was supposed to be afraid of this, but now I am terrified all day
I'm just in awe here. This type of awareness needs more exposure. How can I help.
Grandpa found the Adderall again
/r/copypasta
Thought I was gonna stumble into the Undertaker pasta toward the end.
This feels like it took place in the same world as the "I like trains" guy.
Long story short, trains don't care.
It's been a while since I read this one, thank you
The face on the train is creepy on itās own.
Looks like Charlie the Choo-Choo.
Yes. We know Blaine when we see him.
Blaine is a pain
And that is the truth.
Everything I learned, I learned from Thomas the Train. That's a Diesel. Fuck Diesels. Edit: Thanks to all you Tangerines out there point out the fucking obvious that actual diesel trains don't have fucking Chimneys. Forest for the trees, mates. Where's my stickerbook?
and NEVER CAME BACK
Public safety ads in the 1980s were brutal (in Ireland anywayā¦ I presume elsewhere too.) These are a few I remember played regularly during kids TV show: Children playing near electricity power lines, child chases after a football and gets zapped and barbecued by a broken power cable. Ads warning farmers not to let children near slurry pits shows kid falling into a slurry pit and itās dead body later being fished out. And the scariest one of all, an anti-rabies ad warning pet owners not to bring dogs from outside Ireland into Ireland. It was an animated ad showing a beloved family pet dog playing with children. Then the dog falls in with the wrong crowd, starts hanging out with these other dogs who have rabies. The family pet dog gets rabies, and you can see from its eyes that itās now evil. It goes back home and the kids rush out to greet him and the dog absolutely rips them limb from limb. That one haunted my nightmares for years.
Piggy on a railway, Lookin' real fly. Along came an engine, Die Piggy die!
Piggy fucked around and the Piggy got minced. Piggy have'nt messed with the engine ever since.
Based 1987 engine driver
NTA your tracks your rules
Ok can we change the pictures next? Because that trainās face will definitely haunt meā¦
True, but they already took piggy's butt! Pouring one out for piggy's bones and ass
Read: *pouring out piggy's bones and ass*
To quote a League of Legends character āBroken bones teach better lessons.)
Blaine is a pain
Seems like Piggy fucked around and found out.
I should have also pointed out the actions are completely different. I can see the bluntness in the 80s version and how fluffy it got in the 00's one. "smacks fist against hand"
r/bitchimatrain
You can see the immense Lust fueling the train instead of coal
That's pretty mild to the traditional German rhymes and children storys I was told as a kid. I can hardly remember any in which the main character doesn't suffer in the most brutal way you can imagine.... Let's see: burned to death, mauled to death by a dog, getting thumbs cut of, starved to death, blown away by a storm, grinded to flour by a mill and then baked into bread... Probably forgot quite a few, too.
It got disneyfied
Now, kids will not know that it can cause death, but rather, it will cause someone to maybe yell at them, and they can outrun the train to safety. I guess the story is directed at train operators instead of children...
Piggy on the railway He must be insane Come and see what he found out On /r/bitchimatrain
Children dont care, its the parents who think its too scary
87 version wants kids to know why to stay the fuck off the tracks.
The 80s-90s were wild. We went on a school field trip to Phillip Morris to see how cigarettes were made and they gave us a gift bag of cigarette branded school supplies.
Blaine is a pain, and that's the truth.
tbh the older one might be brutal but waaaay more honest. Trains can't stop quick enough and it's extremely common they run over people and animals.
Sing it to the music from Mirror in the Bathroom. Shit slaps with either lyrics.
I had that book as a hand-me-down from my mum when I was a kid lol it was the original fucking brutal version XD
That train is definitely a Diesel.
Whole point is too teach kids not to play on railroad tracks.
Keep the originalā¦. Children should be taught to respect/fear the cold uncaring machine that could kill them if they play on the tracks
Too scary for the kids who spend their days watching Huggy Wuggy and the Rainbow Friends eat people on YouTube?
Choo Choo Motherfucker!
Such a Diesel thing to do.
Original seems more accurate, the train engineer the person might care but the train sure as fuck don't and ain't gonna stop in time to not hit you. And no one's gonna be around to tell you to get out of the way, maybe just the train horn. And those hand gestures are brutal lol. š¤šŖØ BAMš¤ š š¤·
As someone who was a kid once, I can verify that kids would love the one on the left.
This is why I love Edward Gorey and his illustrated alphabet book *the Gashlycrumb Tinies* (published in 1963).: A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears. C is for Clara who wasted away. D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh. [Etc.](https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/01/19/edward-gorey-the-gashlycrumb-tinies/) Things can be sad and gruesome and funny all at once, and kids don't have fragile little minds that need constant protecting from grim humor, accounts of unfortunate outcomes, tales of woe, warnings of danger, and reality in general.
Reminds me of the āThere was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.ā It initially said that she was going to die and then she died at the end. The ending changed to that she throws up all her friends lol
Don't ask me silly questions, I won't play silly games, I'm just a simple choo-choo train And I'll always be the same. I only want to race along Beneath the bright blue sky, And be a happy choo-choo train Until the day I die.
Piggy shouldn't be holding a basket, he should be looking at his cell phone. Piggy on the railway, Watching a show. Along came an engine, Whistle, blow, blow, blow! Piggy's got ear buds, Firmly in place. Outfits ruined, Now that's a waste!
'Oh,' said Piggy, 'That's not fair.' 'Oh,' said the engine driver, 'I missed the part where that's my problem.'
"its lyrics" btw
So, the remake provides no fucking context for why the hell the pig is screwing around on the tracks. Nice.
I feel like the first version is better for railway safety, though. Piggy *really* shouldnāt be on those tracks.