Yesterday (Sunday, Nov 17th) around 9:20am an Amtrak train struck and killed a man just outside of Mebane, NC.
I was on this train. “The Carolinian” from Charlotte to New York City. I got on at Greensboro.
I think I’d been on the train for less than an hour when this accident happened. I was in the back, I believe it was the last car, so we didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t see any police cars, or anything that was going on at the front of the car.
At some point, after we’d been there for a little while, there was an announcement that we had hit “something”, and they didn’t know what. And later a crew members came back and told us the same thing.
Well, that was a lie. Somebody obviously knew what was going on, and they weren’t telling us. They did tell us that some kind of Amtrak manager or official had to come out to the train and give the okay for us to leave. Also we saw a couple of cops. I’m sure there were a lot more than what we saw.
We eventually found out we’d hit a person, maybe around 6 or 7pm. A passenger was talking on the phone with someone who’d found out online from a news article.
Something much like this:
(from The Times News, Burlington, NC)
So, last night I had assumed that this was Amtrak policy—when the train accidently kills someone, don’t tell the passengers; it might upset them. But it’s not. I just spent 35 minutes on the phone (mostly waiting) to ask about that policy. The policy is that when there is any sort of delay, the crew is supposed to inform the passengers about what is going on with the train. The customer relations woman I spoke with agreed that they should have told us. I think we, the passengers, would’ve been more understanding about the delay if we’d known why. There were apparently police and a coroner and train officials who all had to give us the okay to continue.
By the way, for my trouble, I’ll be getting a $100.00 voucher for train travel. I didn’t call them to complain; I was looking for information, assuming they’d verify my assumption about a “don’t scare the passengers with stories of death trains” policy. I had intended to suggest, if that was their policy, that they reconsider it. But since it wasn’t, the customer relations woman brought up the idea of filing a complaint, and of opening a case for me and getting me that voucher. I don’t even know if I’ll take another train trip in the next year that the voucher is valid, but it’s there if I do want to use it.
One interesting thing that I heard the customer relations woman say, as she was looking up information about the accident, was “the trespasser”. In whatever she was reading from (I assume) her Amtrak computer screen referred to the man who was killed as a “trespasser”. In the various news articles I found this morning he was referred to as a “man” or “person” or “pedestrian”. I just find it interesting. It’s apparently illegal to walk on train tracks or even to cross train tracks except at street train crossings.
Well, we were delayed on site for about 3 hours there, but during much of the afternoon there were more delays as we’d sit on the tracks for 15 or 20 or 30 minutes, as well as long stretches of track that we’d take very slow.
The woman sitting next to me on all but the last 45 minutes or so of the trip was very angry by the end of the day. Early during the day, she was nice enough, very chatty. I liked having someone to talk to, as I don’t generally have much actual contact with other human beings—certainly not in person. But as the day dragged on, she became much less pleasant. There were many, many times I just wished she’d shut up. I did have several reprieves when she talked on the phone to various relatives.
Here are my (texted in) facebook statuses about here from various times during the day:
- On the train next to a chatty older woman who thinks the drugs are responsible for all of society’s problems.
- Chatty train-neighbor also talks very loud on the phone.
- The chatty older woman next to me is much less pleasant now. For several hours she’s been bitterly blaming “him”, the driver, for all the delays.
- I will say this: hearing the chatty older woman complaining so much makes me not want to complain about this kind of thing. Maybe this is a learning experience.
She was convinced that the driver was going too slow and that something was wrong with the train. She thought maybe the driver was scared to go too fast ‘cause we’d already hit something. Later, after we heard from another passenger that the train had killed a person, my chatty neighbor often came back to the topic of crossing train tracks and saying that a person doesn’t run toward a train when it’s coming, they run away. It seems pretty clear to me that in her mind, the person we hit was drunk or high or crazy.
I stayed very calm about the whole delay. I tried to calm her down by suggesting alternates to her theories about the driver and train. I do wonder if I hadn’t been sitting next to someone who was vocally upset about it if I wouldn’t have been more upset. Then again, I do tend to (try to) let things go that aren’t all that important, or that I can’t do anything about. Of course I get upset about things, but what’s the point in getting upset about something like this?
Maybe there was something wrong with the train. We changed engines in Washington. But, for all I know, that may be normal for that stop. We got to Washington D.C. around 10pm, which was a little more than 5 hours behind schedule. And we sat there while they changed the crews and engine. But after Washington, we mostly moved along at what seemed a normal pace.
My guess (and I didn’t ask about this while I was on the phone with Amtrak this morning) is that we were so far behind schedule that there was no way to even remotely “make-up” that time, and they were just sort of routing us around all the other trains—quite a few passed us, off and on all afternoon, during one of our many non-station stops throughout the day.
Much later, around 8pm, as a sort of compensation for our time, they gave us a choice of chicken sandwich or cheeseburger from McDonald’s. I got a cheeseburger. It was a sad little cheeseburger.
I didn’t eat it. Well, I tried one bite of it a little later, and it was horrid.
The chatty neighbor got off the train in Trenton, New Jersey—2 stops before the end of the line. The tain (and I) arrived in New York - Penn Station around 2am, which was a bit more than 5 hours behind schedule. So, at least we didn’t lose any more time after Washington. That’s a plus. After 17+ hours on the train, I was exhausted. I then had to take the subway to my friend’s apartment, where I’m staying.
At some point on the subway, I suddenly felt a little less tired, like I’d gotten my second wind. I’d been up since 7am. I’d dozed very briefly and unsatisfactorily on the train a little in the last few hours. Maybe my body thought it just wasn’t gonna get to do any real sleeping. So when I got my friend’s place it was around 3am. (Thanks, again Corey Loftus, and sorry it was so late.) I didn’t sleep especially well—new place plus frustrations of the day running around in my head.
Anyway, I’m in New York. Whee. I have a rehearsal this evening. Whee. Despite actually being here, it still doesn’t feel “real”. I don’t mean, “Ohmigod, I can’t believe I’m actually here.” I mean, It doesn’t feel like this is actually life, and I don’t feel like I’m actually me.
