I was sixteen when this happened right behind my grandmother's house. Some of the uninjured passengers walked to the house and stayed on the heated patio until transported elsewhere. It was a chaotic day and night as the crash took out the power, all the rescue crews blocked the roads, and the scene itself was horrible. My grandfather was on one of the paramedic crews that responded to the scene. I don't think I'll ever forget the aftermath of events.
One should be careful with personal information online. With this comment we know your age and where you or at least your grandmother used to live, which is enough to find your real name, everywhere you have lived, your phone number, your school history, your job, your face, and your friends and family. Easy identity theft or stalking. The Internet is a wonderful tool, but like any other requires a modicum of safe practices.
@SAOS451316 he Was 16. Probably knows what he's doing. I'm just saying that this info is everywhere anyway. Guard your phone numbers. Don't use your real name or birthday on social media. That said, if you're likely to be Doxxed, check out your social media trail. Google yourself. Never allow tagging. Privacy is an illusion. Unless we get past it we won't get cameras of 4 way stops because omg Privacy! My legal name is nowhere on the internet. Oh yeah, you can try. But thing is, trapped on dial-up AOL I already protected my name. Xo Sam
@@SAOS451316 Ya know, I think you're an awesome person for showing concern for the kiddo. But really all we do know is that a 16 year old somewhere in Boston has a grandmother. If you can actually sleuth your way into acquiring more personal details then you have my respect!
I'm glad that the person responsible for this accident has shown remorse and contrition for their actions and has spent the rest of their life trying to help others. Very rare to see this in these stories. I do think that the second person got off too lightly though.
I think the 1st person got off way too lightly. They killed 16 people and only got 4 years in prison? There are people who only kill 1 and get life without parole. I hate how "well, you didn't mean to" is this magic, borderline get out of jail free card that lets you commit way worse crimes and get off easy.
Yeah, this was a life in prison type of crime in my opinion. But the one guy is making up for it at least. The other guy just walked away free, though? That's not justice.
Having experienced two car crashes, I don't even want to imagine the trauma and horror of a train collision. I hope the survivors got the mental help they likely needed.
I've lost 2 brothers in vehicular car crashes. One was crushed when the van rolled and he was half ejected out the window. The other in a head-on collision he was traveling 90-95mph the suv he hit was going over 100mph less then a foot of skid marks the 2 vehicles were fused together in the ditch and had to be cut apart at the wrecking yard. I've been in 3 roll overs, 2 collisions with trees that totaled the vehicle. Hit a moose at 65mph in a Ford Explorer that almost killed me. I once wrecked a bike so bad I was KO'd for over 2 hours and a Angel put me back into my body. You could call it trauma. Or you can come to terms that there is such thing as luck, natural selection, and nobody makes it out of this life alive. I was also told something I will never forget at my brother Jason's funeral by my religious aunt. She said "Never put a question mark where GOD has put a period".
I never heard about this accident before; I can’t believe that a person with a severe drinking problem would be allowed to operate locomotive at all by their employer
you'd be shocked how many functional alcoholics are out there. people that drive to & from work every day drunk, do their job drunk, etc. if it's a longstanding problem they get very good at masking it & it can be very hard to notice. it's pretty scary
@@nii9466 - I know....i used to be one of them. I got very good at always being where i was supposed to be, and covering my tracks. In December i will have been sober 25 years. I'm glad the Conrail engineer has made a positive change in his life.
In the UK if you'd been arrested for drunk driving and you had a job like that, your employer would be told, you'd be suspended and if convicted you'd lose your job.
In 2000, I was on a train that collided with a bunch of construction equipment that had been left on the track. Luckily, no one died, and there weren't even any serious injuries. There was a pregnant woman worried that she was going into labour, another passenger with a badly bruised arm, and another with a bruised chest (from the tray table) but as far as I know, that was it. My mum, an RN, was asked to help with the injuries. I was left to my own devices for a bit, so I snapped a couple of photos of the wreckage after getting our luggage off the train. We eventually were led on foot to a nearby community centre. We were fed hotdogs, assessed for injuries (again, my mum helped) and eventually loaded onto busses to continue on to our destination. We only ended up being around six hours late arriving.
what about the pregnant woman who thought she was going into labor with her baby was the baby born or was it a false alarm because of the trauma that she endured I am wondering if she is okay and worried about her and her baby and I know that her son or daughter are not a baby anymore but I am curious
@@kellyreiche8775 I have no idea. We never heard from anyone afterward. I assume they were okay. At the time, my mum didn't seem to think the woman was in labour. If she had been, the baby would still likely have been fine, as the pregnancy was quite advanced.
This man deserves so many more views & subscribers. So many channels are using annoying A.I narration. This dude not only covers obscure cases but he does it in a way that comes across so naturally with the facts & great editing. I’ve been here with this channel a long time now & can say that he (or the team) deserve the views & many more imo. Thank you!
I agree, he does them in a dignified manner, without being overly dramatic. I also love that he keeps doing them in the same way and doesn't change his way of doing these videos every now and then, which is something I find disappointing on other channels.
I started working with Amtrak a few years after this accident and was assigned to one of the repair shops that worked on the rail cars damaged in this accident. It was disturbing to work on these cars because there were belongings of the survivors and deceased still on some of the cars. Some cars were beyond repair, cannibalized for parts & scrapped.
Yes, everything that could be identified belonging passengers on the manifest, but small personal items couldn't be accounted for, such as hairbrushes, books, make-up, etc.@@LoveMaskedBandits
The older members of the firehouse where I volunteer still talk about that day. We are 26 miles from the crash location and were called out along with almost every other FH in the area. This incident turns up in mass causality incident response planning.
I’ve been a volunteer FF for about 7 years, my station is also responsible for our regional airport. In our MCI drills, we usually assume that structural failure of the aircraft would have occurred and victims would be ejected, but even if it hadn’t, extrication from an aluminum/composite aircraft wouldn’t be too hard. I can’t imagine trying to extricate victims from a stainless steel train car. My hat’s off to them.
The account that follows 06:20 now makes me wonder how many people have survived the initial unfolding of some terrible disaster only to be trampled by their fellow humans. I'm sure it's a lot.
Yep, sadly crushes, stampedes and getting crushed under foot are all too common. In a mad panic people often only think about their own safety at the cost of others. It's not their fault, its just how our brains are wired. Some people can stay cool under pressure and override this flight response, some people have it drilled into them, but sadly its quite rare.
@@justandy333 As someone who got caught in a stampeding crush of people, there is *nothing* you can do to stop moving. If someone falls, it won't slow down or stop a huge solid wall of people pushing forward, and it's almost hard to breath, the crushing is that bad! You can't stop or bend down to help anyone or that wall of people just moves *over* you. Thanks to that experience, I'm claustrophobic now.
This channel, PlainlyDifficult and Horror Stories are my go-to channels for this kind of content. Always well informed and offers important information to learn from so that, hopefully, others won't make the same mistakes.
Totally agree with your channel choices. If you haven't already check out Waterline Stories and Maritime Horrors , they are both maritime focused but equally well done.
I live in Essex about 5 miles from the crash site. My one brother was training to be an EMT at the time and was at the crash site. Talk about a hands-on experience! Since the crash knocked out power lines along the railway, a radio relay station was set up at a nearby school. My other brother was a ham radio operator and volunteered to man the radios. Information about the victims and survivors was relayed up and down the railroad line. I gave blood. Local restaurants provided food for the rescue crews. This became a real community effort to bring as much aid to this disaster as we could.
The thing that had me screaming at the screen was the fact that all those safety items on the other train were purposely disabled! What kind of psychopath does this??
False Alarms. What likely occurred in this situation was an alarm giving false positives and no one in the company had bothered to fix it when notified. It had then been silenced by someone who didn't want to deal with the fifteenth false signal that day. Likely why no one complained about it during the start of the shift either. Everyone knew but as the company never fixed the underlining problem of the False Alarms, why take off the tape...? Again, can not say for 100%, but when you listen to enough disaster videos: Companies not doing something about False Alarms is a massive problem!
It is not my fault that you cannot recognise the bigger picture here. We are all part of capitalism. You too. Educate yourself before being weird on the internet. I can give you a few links if you want. @@FRLN500
I remembered when this happened. My friend’s sister was supposed to be on the train but overslept. I was with my friend when it happened but they thought she was on it at the time it crashed. Such a preventable accident.
Our school's anti-drug counselor was really lucky, he and his wife were also supposed to be on board - they just missed it. Great guy and recovering alcoholic who turned counselor just like Ricky Gates. Told us kids the story to prove that "Mary Jane" is not harmless if you're operating a vehicle!
@nevaehhamilton3493 “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love," Martin Luther King Jr. The guy made one of the worst mistakes a human can make, but he IS still a human. If the victims have forgiven him, then what is it your place to judge?
@@queencerseilannister3519 forgiveness will never bring back the loved ones they lost. Forgiveness will never heal the pain from from the grief that is everlasting. Forgiveness will never fix the catastrophes created from the tragedy. Forgiveness is a sham. Forgiveness erases the accountability and responsibility for the catalyst of the tragedy. Forgiveness shows mercy to those who are unworthy of mercy.
@@nevaehhamilton3493Forgiveness is just as important as judgement. Do you realize how many desitions you have made that could have lead to manslaughter? People get lazy, and don’t realize the danger they put others and themselves in, and sometimes that leads to catastrophies.
Just goes to show, you can never be complacent when you have other people's safety in your hands. Because everything is fine until it really REALLY isn't
Driving a car under the influence is insanely reckless and downright evil but driving a train with hundreds of people under the influence? Absolutely psychopathic.
He wasn't driving a train with hundreds of people. The one driving the Amtrak train (who was sober) was killed in the crash. The Conrail engineer was the one who caused this tragedy.
Wow. I vaguely remember hearing about this crash when it happened - but didn't realize that it was determined to have been caused by the engineer of the freight train.... What a grim existence to wake up every morning knowing you had killed 16 people and injured dozens of others for a quick high...
This is the incident which started my life long interest in disasters. It was featured in Readers Digest, which my grandparents received monthly, and once I read this I went through their RD back catalogue and read up on other disasters, such as the Herald of Free Enterprise. These stories always made me curious about what lessons were learned and how has it made life safer for others. I think it also gave me that 'always look for an exit' mentality that I still have today. Great coverage, as always!
For what it’s worth the Colonial is one of dozens of named services that were mainly confined to the NEC (with some extending beyond Washington and/or branching off to Springfield instead of Boston) that are still in the timetable, just without names. They collectively came to be called Northeast Direct services in the ‘90s, then (bizarrely) Acela Regional, looking to capitalize on the popularity of the then-new Acela train sets that were providing the fast, former Metroliner services even though these services did not use those trains. Then they were just called Regionals, and more recently Northeast Regionals.
I grew up a couple of miles from where this happened and currently live a couple of miles from where it happened. One of my neighbors was a paramedic and his wife was a qualified medical personnel as well, they spent a lot of time there trying to help with saving people and clean up.
I remember hearing of this when it happened. It is sad it takes a disaster sometimes to catch people's attention. I am glad that he changed his life and went on,and is helping with the problem now instead of adding to it
Reminds me of a line in a film, (I can't remember which film). "You can't just tap someone on their shoulder to get their attention. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer." or words to that effect. Its kinda true, Only a big disaster will make people sit up and listen. As they say most safety protocols are written in blood.
Folly and tragedy, once again hand in hand. As a citizen of the Western half of the U.S., though, I have to say a whole lot of us would be thrilled to have such a useful network of railroad transport. We've got mile-long trains full of coal or cattle, but no human transportation by rail outside of tourist hops or city-specific commuter lines.
Northeast Corridor is very much an example of while far from world class that the USA can do trains and that Americans will use them if they are frequent. Sadly those mile long trains are the problem, The freight RRs own the tracks and by law Amtrak is supposed to have full priority but the freight RRs found a loophole. Make the trains too long to fit on a siding and then they dont have to side and since the feds never regulated train length the passenger trains get the short straw.
Fun fact: as this collision happened, the railroad trade unions were suing the government to prevent drug and alcohol testing of railway employees who had caused accidents. The case, Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Assn., was as the Supreme Court when the accident happened.
Fun fact, it was common at the time. Even drunk driving wasn’t taken seriously. By the way, drug and alcohol testing? I think you mean drug testing. Do you think engineers have to go through a breathalyzer before starting shift?
@@thelogicaldanger And how would alcohol testing work? You’d literally have to show up for work drunk to fail it. Other recreational drugs stay in your system for up to a month. And can affect your system for days after you’ve taken it. Not so with alcohol
@@neilkurzman4907 What are you talking about? The standard drug testing is urine, and if someone is drunk, then alcohol metabolites will be in the urine, just like the metabolites for all the other drugs they test for. Random drug testing of course doesn't catch everyone, but it will catch the people who are consistently abusing.
@@thelogicaldanger If you had alcohol the night before, there is absolutely no regulation, saying that’s a problem. You could do a blood alcohol test or a breathalyzer.
Thanks for this story and can't imagine going 105 miles an hour and hitting another train head on. So horrible the way the cars all buckled up. RIP THE ONES WHO DID NOT SURVIVE.. i really love train travel.
My dad works with CP rail monitoring signils. Drivers are supposed to check in at certain points, and if they don't or if they don't do the proper signal, he's supposed to call them up and be like "hey what's up" or if there is a malfunction, drivers can call him to troubleshoot.
I have no connection with this channel, but I read your comment , and I am pleased to hear you are healing. It can be a long journey, but the start is the most important achievement. I wish for you continued progress.
This is why people need to understand that weed, what is now legal in some states, can still cause problems if not used properly. Its the same with alcohol. Use it responsibly.
@@chrisdoyon7556 haha actually it is very similar... I say them both out loud and they sound the same. I've been here long enough I say hon... Idk when I started
I was an addict for 17 years, and I've been sober for 3. People do the best with what they have and know at the time. Usually addiction forms as a coping mechanism for other trauma or issues. But people can change, and while his behavior was inexcusable, I commend him for owning his part, and making the changes he needed to, then started helping other to avoid making similar choices.
Thank you, AMTRAK here in Washington State is fairly popular, Seattle to Portland mostly. The high speed train that crashed in Nisqually WA was a Master Class on Operator Error.
I watch this channels video within hours of every upload and have been subscribed since it first started during Covid. I enjoy it a lot, thanks the the creator. I really like the narrators voice and cadence.
Another excellent video. I'd like to see an episode covering the Youngstown Florida train derailment of 1978. A chlorine gas leak in the middle of s foggy night.
Honestly, good on the engineer for owning up to his negligence and his fault in this tragedy, and then redirecting his time toward speaking out against substance abuse. I'm sure that took a lot of guts and a lot of soul-searching. It's horrible that it took such a tragic event like this for him to wake up to his problems but the fact that he served his time, admitted his fault, and went on to try and help others shows that his is a classic case of "good person who made bad decisions".
A video suggestion: the Frank slide disaster from 1903 in Alberta, Canada. Been looking all over for information & well done videos about it and it's unfortunate there aren't many.
Great episode as always. I live in Maryland and take trains along the NEC fairly often- usually the Penn Line MARC trains to Washington but I've done the train trip to Boston, NYC and Philly a few times. Train travel is a breeze for convenience when you live near a station, and glad it's only gotten safer. One nitpick though: the state is pronounced "MAIR-ih-land" with the Y making a soft sound like in the word "it" or "if", not like the name Mary.
I grew up a mile from the crash site, I remember it well. My old neighbor used to Ricky Gates speaking at AA meetings frequently in nearby Essex. My understanding is that this incident not only ushered in random drug testing for railway workers but also police and fire.
When I was younger, I worked at a theme park running rides, including rollercoasters and little kiddie's rides. I also liked to party and particularly liked smoking weed. That said, I wouldn't dream of operating a ride with kids on it while high. I'd work the bar of a pub while stoned, I was even a projectionist running old cinema equipment and was regularly high there, but where you're responsible for other peoples' safety, that's a big no. Both these guys deserved a long prison sentence.
@@jasinere35 I'm pretty sure they'd get closer to 10 years here in the UK where it would be manslaughter. Maybe with good behaviour they'd serve closer to 5 years in the end anyway, but given the criminal negligence and the scale of the disaster, it clearly justifies maximum sentence. And the idea of one getting off scot free so he can secure the conviction of the other, that's just horrendous. Both are equally guilty and should be treated as such.
I was on the outbound that crashed at Granville in Sydney Australia. Ptsd stopped about a decade after the incident. Still the worst train accident in Australian history
There is such a thing as punishment as well. He killed many people and ruined many families. Serving a short sentence means nothing. He is lucky someone has not avenged their lost family members.
@@patriciamariemitchel I wonder if youd feel the same way if you were on that train, or if one of your loved ones died in the incident This was a failure of justice - guy should have been locked up for life, simple as that
@@goonmaster9000 This is the second most asinine comment I've read so far. He was let out for good behavior and did everything he possibly could to atone for his sins, and is doing it quite well actually. If he had shown no remorse, then it would be a different story. But he paid for his consequences and learned from them, and is actively helping to improve his and other's lives. You pretend that personal growth is non-existent. Your cruelty is absurd.
It took a long time for this country to take ‘drinking on the job’ serious. This is in ‘87, likely somebody knew of the issue & just looked the other way. The ‘good ole boy’ thing is still going on today!
Thank you for a great video as always. Have you ever considered covering Amtrak #188? I was on that train in 2015 and have never seen anyone cover it. It was also a NE Corridor train. Fascinating story of how positive train control was finally introduced into the NE Corridor, the only stretch of track in the United States that Amtrak owns. Thanks again for your amazing work. I always look forward to new videos from you.
It's good that these things are remembered. In my country there was a rail collision between two trains in which 24 people died which was completely forgotten until the 25th anniversary in 2011, then people thought "oh yeah, that happened" and it was the subject of some newspaper articles and a television programme. It had happened on the national day of remembrance which is why it didn't get much attention over the years. I lived nearby so I once visited the location.
Does it seem to anyone else that a lot of these disasters happen right around the holidays - Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, etc.? Is there a tendency for more negligence then? Or do we remember those better because it is so poignant when the passengers never get home for Christmas or see the new year they've just been celebrating?
Maybe it's a combination of a lot of people traveling, occasionally companies overbooking to make more money and we remember tragedies associated with big events a lot more. In any case it's very tragic to think about being in a mindset of getting to enjoy life only to have it cut short by factors beyond one's control.
I lived 10 minutes away from where that accident was. I can still remember that day. People trapped pinned in the wreckage half alive, half dead. It was unbelievable. I was working at an apartment complex close by too the accident
Another great video. Thank you for all your efforts to inform us of these tragedies. I admit, I'm surprised the toll of this one wasn't higher, it's lucky the coaches at the front were almost empty.
I live in Newport News and we still have that Amtrak station..I never heard of this story until now...thanks for sharing Fascinating Horror...I look forward to your videos
Great content as always. Any chance you could do a vid about non-fatal accidents but with lots of injured? Sometime the lack of a fatality makes bad things seem better than they were.
I was only 5 years old when this horrible accident happened. I always loved seeing the Amtrak Trains and still do. I’m glad Justice was served and REGULATIONS were put into place. 💯👀💅🏾
Each week I really look forward to your videos. Well researched, narrated and presented. And the background musicis so cool, and become iconic to your channel. Each incident you present is interesting, sad and tragic, but interesting, and given we are in Australia, we get to learn much about whats happened in the worlld over time. Thankyou!
Allô, if i may ask you to make a vidio about the Lake Mégantic in the province of Québec Canada. Was a real and still in our memories from the desaster. Thank you so much for all your work.
So when you commit a crime with someone else, whee you're equally responsible, you just tell on the other one and are free to go? How?!? That's so stupid, how corrupt is the system?
i’m from maryland and even still we talk about this i’m 20 so obviously i wasn’t alive at the time of the crash but i was taking the amtrak to georgia one time and my teacher talked about the chase train crash
Ricky Gates is a name known to most railroaders of that time period. If anything positive came out of this, drug & alcohol abuse among railroad employees was taken seriously once Federal testing was mandated. Unfortunately younger employees aren't aware of this and don't grasp this is why railroads now drug test. Some companies claim they do, but railroads actually do it as it mandated.
I'm glad he got himself turned around and works to do good, but it surprises me that engineers responsible for fatal crashes aren't hit with harsher penalties. If you killed 16 people due to drunk/high driving, you'd be in much worse trouble. And that Bostian guy who sent his train flying off the tracks in 2015, killing eight, injuring well over 100 and had no explanation why was completely let off. I don't mean to sound out for blood, but I don't see how you can do something like that, say "stuff happens," and just walk away.
@@ressljs The FRA has no authority over criminal matters. That’s up to the discretion of the local DA and few seem willing to pursue that avenue. Not the first time a crew member has been responsible for a someone’s death from negligence and wasn’t held accountable criminally. What most train crew don’t realize is that their Union Dues don’t cover criminal matters. If you were to get charged your on your own financially.
I work for a state workers compensation company. This year in conjunction with our Safety Services team we're going to run Fascinating Horror episodes via Zoom, and in the office. I can't think of a more devilish way for the industry to present work place accidents. P.S. To the narrator of this marvolus series, your voice sounds nearly identically to the actor, Harry Floyd, who played Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. (Season 1)
Thank you for an interesting and informative video. The funny thing is, I’m from this area of Maryland. However, at the time of this crash, I had been living abroad. This was the first time I’ve ever heard of it! I did move back to Maryland after 5 years, by which time I suppose the story had died down. The internet at its best, learning things I missed while abroad!
My friends father was a firefighter at the time. He told me that they would just find random body parts over the ground, and how it was the worst thing any of them have ever seen. The most striking part, however, is when his captain told him to go down and search a road going into the woods. After walking through the clearing, he found a detached car, and it wasnt a road at all, the train car just plowed through massive trees and bush, flattening everything for almost a mile.
Because of this crash, Conrail from that point to it's 1999 split pulled most of their freight trains of the NEC. Because of this move, the Potomac Yard (across the Potomac River from DC) became a victim of this shift. Known locally as the POT Yard, it's services were no longer needed. Today, DC Metro has a station stop there to remind people what was once there!😔
I was supposed to take this train but I overslept and planned to take the next train. When we got to the New Carrollton station they would not tell us what happened. They just said the track was closed and we could take a very long bus ride to NYC. We went back to a restaurant/bar in Annapolis and my ride had a brother driving up to NY that night. When we walked into the bar everyone was wide eyed and said my parents had been calling to see if anyone knew if I had been on the train. I had recently moved to NYC and was visiting my family home and friends in and near Annapolis. I had work. downtown the next morning. My parents were gone on a ski trip and were very worried.
Remember this when it happened. This was the start of drug testing for all types of occupations. I had a commercial driver license and remember people losing jobs because they smoked off the job and sometimes days before.
You can put all the safety features you want. But ultimately it is still in the operators hands to maintain control and so things safely. One of the highest causes of crashes and accidents is often operator error.
I worked emergency services in a town in New England years ago. There was a train line running through town that serviced Amtrak. Amtrak Authority provided training for us; those dudes are no joke. The rules were simple: stay off the rails, if something is wrong with the rails call us immediately no matter how trivial, do not try to fix a broken crossing without direct instructions from us (we had a standing order for one that consisted entirely of "push up gently on the crossing arm with one hand"). Then they showed us a video of a woman getting hit by a train; she exploded, and her disembodied legs nearly killed a reporter. In town speed for a train is 25mph even though it looks like it's doing 3 and it will destroy you. They don't care if you're dumb enough to get hit, they didn't even seem overly concerned about their stuff being broken, but traumatizing their engineers and potentially killing passengers? Aw heck no.
Only served 4 years for killing 16 people and recklessly endangering the rest while under the influence. Really... When I became a volunteer firefighter in 2000, we went over the rescue operations of this crash. I remember being horrified by the pictures and videos of this. This crash led to a lot of rescue tool companies like Holmatro (aka Jaws of Life) to start designing tools that were capable of cutting into the heavy stainless steel of railcars. Today, many of these tools apply well over 60,000 pounds of hydraulic cutting and spreading pressure, and battery-powered saws contain heavy metal cutting blades capable of breaking through the steel and the heavy glass windows. Rescue procedures for rail accidents have greatly changed in the last 30+ years. Sadly, as often happens in emergency services, people have to die for something to effectively change.
As for some of the locomotives in the crash, Conrail 5045 was totally destroyed and was never rebuilt. Not only that, but both AEM-7s 903 and 900 plus a few of the coaches involved were also deemed a total loss and scrapped.
I heard Gunpowder River, and for a second I wondered if this was a train disaster video or an industrial disaster video about bad handling of explosive chemicals.
I was sixteen when this happened right behind my grandmother's house. Some of the uninjured passengers walked to the house and stayed on the heated patio until transported elsewhere. It was a chaotic day and night as the crash took out the power, all the rescue crews blocked the roads, and the scene itself was horrible. My grandfather was on one of the paramedic crews that responded to the scene. I don't think I'll ever forget the aftermath of events.
16 years..and 16 body bags but killer gets 5 to 4 long years too :)
One should be careful with personal information online. With this comment we know your age and where you or at least your grandmother used to live, which is enough to find your real name, everywhere you have lived, your phone number, your school history, your job, your face, and your friends and family. Easy identity theft or stalking. The Internet is a wonderful tool, but like any other requires a modicum of safe practices.
@SAOS451316 he Was 16. Probably knows what he's doing. I'm just saying that this info is everywhere anyway.
Guard your phone numbers. Don't use your real name or birthday on social media.
That said, if you're likely to be Doxxed, check out your social media trail. Google yourself. Never allow tagging.
Privacy is an illusion. Unless we get past it we won't get cameras of 4 way stops because omg Privacy!
My legal name is nowhere on the internet. Oh yeah, you can try. But thing is, trapped on dial-up AOL I already protected my name.
Xo Sam
🙄@@SAOS451316
@@SAOS451316 Ya know, I think you're an awesome person for showing concern for the kiddo. But really all we do know is that a 16 year old somewhere in Boston has a grandmother. If you can actually sleuth your way into acquiring more personal details then you have my respect!
I'm glad that the person responsible for this accident has shown remorse and contrition for their actions and has spent the rest of their life trying to help others. Very rare to see this in these stories. I do think that the second person got off too lightly though.
He had more humanity and dignity than most of the "killers" in these videos...
He reminds of that other guy from the Hyatt Regency Video.
I think the 1st person got off way too lightly. They killed 16 people and only got 4 years in prison? There are people who only kill 1 and get life without parole. I hate how "well, you didn't mean to" is this magic, borderline get out of jail free card that lets you commit way worse crimes and get off easy.
I was going to comment the same thing.
@@reversalmushroom Because they were white. Basically. I'd have jailed them for 15 years at least, no parole before 10.
Yeah, this was a life in prison type of crime in my opinion. But the one guy is making up for it at least. The other guy just walked away free, though? That's not justice.
Having experienced two car crashes, I don't even want to imagine the trauma and horror of a train collision. I hope the survivors got the mental help they likely needed.
I've lost 2 brothers in vehicular car crashes. One was crushed when the van rolled and he was half ejected out the window. The other in a head-on collision he was traveling 90-95mph the suv he hit was going over 100mph less then a foot of skid marks the 2 vehicles were fused together in the ditch and had to be cut apart at the wrecking yard. I've been in 3 roll overs, 2 collisions with trees that totaled the vehicle. Hit a moose at 65mph in a Ford Explorer that almost killed me. I once wrecked a bike so bad I was KO'd for over 2 hours and a Angel put me back into my body. You could call it trauma. Or you can come to terms that there is such thing as luck, natural selection, and nobody makes it out of this life alive. I was also told something I will never forget at my brother Jason's funeral by my religious aunt. She said "Never put a question mark where GOD has put a period".
@@tanderson6442sounds like yall gotta slow down 😮😅
@@quest1227 Bruh. Tactless.
@@quest1227 Nah neither accident was my fault. I had no points added.
@@quest1227 that was just life in rural Alaska circa 1980.
I never heard about this accident before; I can’t believe that a person with a severe drinking problem would be allowed to operate locomotive at all by their employer
Look at all the drunk pilots that were flying years ago. Some times the employers just don't know.
The employer was Conrail, which was a US government entity.
you'd be shocked how many functional alcoholics are out there. people that drive to & from work every day drunk, do their job drunk, etc. if it's a longstanding problem they get very good at masking it & it can be very hard to notice. it's pretty scary
@@nii9466 - I know....i used to be one of them. I got very good at always being where i was supposed to be, and covering my tracks.
In December i will have been sober 25 years. I'm glad the Conrail engineer has made a positive change in his life.
In the UK if you'd been arrested for drunk driving and you had a job like that, your employer would be told, you'd be suspended and if convicted you'd lose your job.
In 2000, I was on a train that collided with a bunch of construction equipment that had been left on the track. Luckily, no one died, and there weren't even any serious injuries. There was a pregnant woman worried that she was going into labour, another passenger with a badly bruised arm, and another with a bruised chest (from the tray table) but as far as I know, that was it. My mum, an RN, was asked to help with the injuries. I was left to my own devices for a bit, so I snapped a couple of photos of the wreckage after getting our luggage off the train. We eventually were led on foot to a nearby community centre. We were fed hotdogs, assessed for injuries (again, my mum helped) and eventually loaded onto busses to continue on to our destination. We only ended up being around six hours late arriving.
I hope that your Mom got at least a very polite letter of thanks from the railway company!! 👏
what about the pregnant woman who thought she was going into labor with her baby was the baby born or was it a false alarm because of the trauma that she endured I am wondering if she is okay and worried about her and her baby and I know that her son or daughter are not a baby anymore but I am curious
@@kellyreiche8775 I have no idea. We never heard from anyone afterward. I assume they were okay. At the time, my mum didn't seem to think the woman was in labour. If she had been, the baby would still likely have been fine, as the pregnancy was quite advanced.
Where was this? Might be able to find a online article or news segment about this
@@tdoran616 Just outside of Guelph, Ontario. Summer of 2000.
Edit: I googled it. It was train 683 on July 9th, 2000.
This man deserves so many more views & subscribers. So many channels are using annoying A.I narration. This dude not only covers obscure cases but he does it in a way that comes across so naturally with the facts & great editing. I’ve been here with this channel a long time now & can say that he (or the team) deserve the views & many more imo. Thank you!
I agree, he does them in a dignified manner, without being overly dramatic. I also love that he keeps doing them in the same way and doesn't change his way of doing these videos every now and then, which is something I find disappointing on other channels.
@@murphychurch8251 the only change i noticed was, thankfully, lowering the volume of the bg music, and doing some funny stuff for the holidays
Brick immortar does this too. Different events but mass respect. I enjoy watching both ❤
I started working with Amtrak a few years after this accident and was assigned to one of the repair shops that worked on the rail cars damaged in this accident. It was disturbing to work on these cars because there were belongings of the survivors and deceased still on some of the cars. Some cars were beyond repair, cannibalized for parts & scrapped.
Were the items retrieved sent to any family members?
Yes, everything that could be identified belonging passengers on the manifest, but small personal items couldn't be accounted for, such as hairbrushes, books, make-up, etc.@@LoveMaskedBandits
The older members of the firehouse where I volunteer still talk about that day. We are 26 miles from the crash location and were called out along with almost every other FH in the area. This incident turns up in mass causality incident response planning.
I’ve been a volunteer FF for about 7 years, my station is also responsible for our regional airport. In our MCI drills, we usually assume that structural failure of the aircraft would have occurred and victims would be ejected, but even if it hadn’t, extrication from an aluminum/composite aircraft wouldn’t be too hard. I can’t imagine trying to extricate victims from a stainless steel train car. My hat’s off to them.
The account that follows 06:20 now makes me wonder how many people have survived the initial unfolding of some terrible disaster only to be trampled by their fellow humans. I'm sure it's a lot.
It's definitely a repeating theme here on this channel.
It's a repeating theme through history sadly.
Yep, sadly crushes, stampedes and getting crushed under foot are all too common. In a mad panic people often only think about their own safety at the cost of others. It's not their fault, its just how our brains are wired. Some people can stay cool under pressure and override this flight response, some people have it drilled into them, but sadly its quite rare.
@@justandy333 As someone who got caught in a stampeding crush of people, there is *nothing* you can do to stop moving. If someone falls, it won't slow down or stop a huge solid wall of people pushing forward, and it's almost hard to breath, the crushing is that bad! You can't stop or bend down to help anyone or that wall of people just moves *over* you. Thanks to that experience, I'm claustrophobic now.
@@gsdalpha1358 Which crush were you caught in?
This channel, PlainlyDifficult and Horror Stories are my go-to channels for this kind of content. Always well informed and offers important information to learn from so that, hopefully, others won't make the same mistakes.
Totally agree with your channel choices. If you haven't already check out Waterline Stories and Maritime Horrors , they are both maritime focused but equally well done.
Same@@insanimal2
I haven't heard of Horror Stories, I'll check it out 🤩
Plainly difficult is just another content farm channel imo
@@pootispiker2866I like how PD explains certain situations.
I live in Essex about 5 miles from the crash site. My one brother was training to be an EMT at the time and was at the crash site. Talk about a hands-on experience! Since the crash knocked out power lines along the railway, a radio relay station was set up at a nearby school. My other brother was a ham radio operator and volunteered to man the radios. Information about the victims and survivors was relayed up and down the railroad line. I gave blood. Local restaurants provided food for the rescue crews. This became a real community effort to bring as much aid to this disaster as we could.
The thing that had me screaming at the screen was the fact that all those safety items on the other train were purposely disabled! What kind of psychopath does this??
False Alarms.
What likely occurred in this situation was an alarm giving false positives and no one in the company had bothered to fix it when notified. It had then been silenced by someone who didn't want to deal with the fifteenth false signal that day. Likely why no one complained about it during the start of the shift either. Everyone knew but as the company never fixed the underlining problem of the False Alarms, why take off the tape...?
Again, can not say for 100%, but when you listen to enough disaster videos:
Companies not doing something about False Alarms is a massive problem!
It seems that almost every time safety is disabled, it's to cut corners to save time or make something easier
Capitalism.
@@avgeek-and-fashion What? Crew members were responsible. How does that equate with capitalism. Please take your ignorance elsewhere.
It is not my fault that you cannot recognise the bigger picture here. We are all part of capitalism. You too. Educate yourself before being weird on the internet. I can give you a few links if you want. @@FRLN500
I remembered when this happened. My friend’s sister was supposed to be on the train but overslept. I was with my friend when it happened but they thought she was on it at the time it crashed. Such a preventable accident.
Our school's anti-drug counselor was really lucky, he and his wife were also supposed to be on board - they just missed it. Great guy and recovering alcoholic who turned counselor just like Ricky Gates. Told us kids the story to prove that "Mary Jane" is not harmless if you're operating a vehicle!
I actually met Ricky a few months ago. He still lives nearby chase in Maryland. He's a friendly guy and very remorseful
Remorse will not bring back the lives the driver killed. Why do you see that ignoramus as a human being?
@nevaehhamilton3493 “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love," Martin Luther King Jr.
The guy made one of the worst mistakes a human can make, but he IS still a human. If the victims have forgiven him, then what is it your place to judge?
@@queencerseilannister3519 forgiveness will never bring back the loved ones they lost. Forgiveness will never heal the pain from from the grief that is everlasting. Forgiveness will never fix the catastrophes created from the tragedy. Forgiveness is a sham. Forgiveness erases the accountability and responsibility for the catalyst of the tragedy. Forgiveness shows mercy to those who are unworthy of mercy.
@@nevaehhamilton3493Forgiveness is just as important as judgement. Do you realize how many desitions you have made that could have lead to manslaughter? People get lazy, and don’t realize the danger they put others and themselves in, and sometimes that leads to catastrophies.
@@nevaehhamilton3493 Learning from one's mistakes is a cornerstone of human nature.
Just goes to show, you can never be complacent when you have other people's safety in your hands. Because everything is fine until it really REALLY isn't
Thank you for this. I truly appreciate your solemn voice and respectful treatment of this sort of subject. This report was done right.
wow, the people in the train were insanely lucky. when i heard the number of passengers i fully expected the dead to reach triple digits.
I wonder if the design of the new cars helped some.
@@bemusedbandersnatch2069 Sure they did!
Driving a car under the influence is insanely reckless and downright evil but driving a train with hundreds of people under the influence? Absolutely psychopathic.
He was swerving all over the place!
It was the three-locomotive train that had the stoned crew, not the passenger train.
He wasn't driving a train with hundreds of people. The one driving the Amtrak train (who was sober) was killed in the crash. The Conrail engineer was the one who caused this tragedy.
Rookie
Amateur
@@pootispiker2866 Lol! XD
Wow. I vaguely remember hearing about this crash when it happened - but didn't realize that it was determined to have been caused by the engineer of the freight train.... What a grim existence to wake up every morning knowing you had killed 16 people and injured dozens of others for a quick high...
This is the incident which started my life long interest in disasters. It was featured in Readers Digest, which my grandparents received monthly, and once I read this I went through their RD back catalogue and read up on other disasters, such as the Herald of Free Enterprise.
These stories always made me curious about what lessons were learned and how has it made life safer for others.
I think it also gave me that 'always look for an exit' mentality that I still have today.
Great coverage, as always!
"Drama in Real Life" ... some were astinishingly gory 🤕
I love Tuesday mornings when one of my favorite channels uploads like clockwork ❤❤❤
For what it’s worth the Colonial is one of dozens of named services that were mainly confined to the NEC (with some extending beyond Washington and/or branching off to Springfield instead of Boston) that are still in the timetable, just without names. They collectively came to be called Northeast Direct services in the ‘90s, then (bizarrely) Acela Regional, looking to capitalize on the popularity of the then-new Acela train sets that were providing the fast, former Metroliner services even though these services did not use those trains. Then they were just called Regionals, and more recently Northeast Regionals.
I grew up a couple of miles from where this happened and currently live a couple of miles from where it happened. One of my neighbors was a paramedic and his wife was a qualified medical personnel as well, they spent a lot of time there trying to help with saving people and clean up.
I remember hearing of this when it happened. It is sad it takes a disaster sometimes to catch people's attention. I am glad that he changed his life and went on,and is helping with the problem now instead of adding to it
Seems to me it always takes a disaster to change things.
Reminds me of a line in a film, (I can't remember which film). "You can't just tap someone on their shoulder to get their attention. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer." or words to that effect. Its kinda true, Only a big disaster will make people sit up and listen. As they say most safety protocols are written in blood.
unions need their power reduced so people who would otherwise be fired can be!!! protecting a drug or booze addict is an accident waiting to happen.
Folly and tragedy, once again hand in hand. As a citizen of the Western half of the U.S., though, I have to say a whole lot of us would be thrilled to have such a useful network of railroad transport. We've got mile-long trains full of coal or cattle, but no human transportation by rail outside of tourist hops or city-specific commuter lines.
Northeast Corridor is very much an example of while far from world class that the USA can do trains and that Americans will use them if they are frequent. Sadly those mile long trains are the problem, The freight RRs own the tracks and by law Amtrak is supposed to have full priority but the freight RRs found a loophole. Make the trains too long to fit on a siding and then they dont have to side and since the feds never regulated train length the passenger trains get the short straw.
Fun fact: as this collision happened, the railroad trade unions were suing the government to prevent drug and alcohol testing of railway employees who had caused accidents. The case, Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Assn., was as the Supreme Court when the accident happened.
Fun fact, it was common at the time. Even drunk driving wasn’t taken seriously.
By the way, drug and alcohol testing? I think you mean drug testing.
Do you think engineers have to go through a breathalyzer before starting shift?
@@neilkurzman4907 alcohol is one of the drug tested for in drug testing.
@@thelogicaldanger
And how would alcohol testing work?
You’d literally have to show up for work drunk to fail it. Other recreational drugs stay in your system for up to a month. And can affect your system for days after you’ve taken it.
Not so with alcohol
@@neilkurzman4907 What are you talking about? The standard drug testing is urine, and if someone is drunk, then alcohol metabolites will be in the urine, just like the metabolites for all the other drugs they test for. Random drug testing of course doesn't catch everyone, but it will catch the people who are consistently abusing.
@@thelogicaldanger
If you had alcohol the night before, there is absolutely no regulation, saying that’s a problem. You could do a blood alcohol test or a breathalyzer.
Thanks for this story and can't imagine going 105 miles an hour and hitting another train head on. So horrible the way the cars all buckled up. RIP THE ONES WHO DID NOT SURVIVE.. i really love train travel.
They were travelling in the same direction
🙏🙏❤️
My dad works with CP rail monitoring signils. Drivers are supposed to check in at certain points, and if they don't or if they don't do the proper signal, he's supposed to call them up and be like "hey what's up" or if there is a malfunction, drivers can call him to troubleshoot.
I love fascinating horror. I doubt you read these but you’ve helped a broken mind heal over the past few years xx
I have no connection with this channel, but I read your comment , and I am pleased to hear you are healing. It can be a long journey, but the start is the most important achievement. I wish for you continued progress.
This is why people need to understand that weed, what is now legal in some states, can still cause problems if not used properly.
Its the same with alcohol. Use it responsibly.
I despise potheads. It isn't "harmless" like they try to claim, and this disaster is just one of countless examples that proves it.
@ct92404 plus weed stays in your system longer then alcohol
there was a huge train accident in germany, few years ago...
the operator played on his cell phone... its about ATTENTION
@@ehfik same what happened in Chatsworth, CA in 2008, where the engineer was texting while driving
After 20 years in maryland, i have gone from pronouncing it as mary-land to mer-i-lan
Had you been born there, you could make the final step to ‘merlin’
@@chrisdoyon7556 haha actually it is very similar... I say them both out loud and they sound the same. I've been here long enough I say hon... Idk when I started
@@chrisdoyon7556 the -i- to me is soft. No pause so more like merilan said fast
I was an addict for 17 years, and I've been sober for 3. People do the best with what they have and know at the time. Usually addiction forms as a coping mechanism for other trauma or issues. But people can change, and while his behavior was inexcusable, I commend him for owning his part, and making the changes he needed to, then started helping other to avoid making similar choices.
Thank you, AMTRAK here in Washington State is fairly popular, Seattle to Portland mostly. The high speed train that crashed in Nisqually WA was a Master Class on Operator Error.
Always great, thorough docs. FYI: Maryland ~ 'MEHR-uh-lund'
Down here in the south, we say “Mare lund”. It’s generally too hot to bother with that middle syllable
Take out the uh, don’t need it. It’s just “merh-lund”
Always look forward to Tuesday mornings for a dose of FH he never disappoints with his content
"Shrill" showed me that people with beautiful accents always say "Maryland" in such an elegant way. You didn't disappoint 🤩
I watch this channels video within hours of every upload and have been subscribed since it first started during Covid. I enjoy it a lot, thanks the the creator. I really like the narrators voice and cadence.
Another excellent video. I'd like to see an episode covering the Youngstown Florida train derailment of 1978. A chlorine gas leak in the middle of s foggy night.
Honestly, good on the engineer for owning up to his negligence and his fault in this tragedy, and then redirecting his time toward speaking out against substance abuse. I'm sure that took a lot of guts and a lot of soul-searching. It's horrible that it took such a tragic event like this for him to wake up to his problems but the fact that he served his time, admitted his fault, and went on to try and help others shows that his is a classic case of "good person who made bad decisions".
just hearing the bumper music on these videos gives me the chills. I love it!
A video suggestion: the Frank slide disaster from 1903 in Alberta, Canada. Been looking all over for information & well done videos about it and it's unfortunate there aren't many.
Thank you,. I had not heard about this. Greetings from Dimboola, in Victoria, Australia 🇦🇺.
Great episode as always. I live in Maryland and take trains along the NEC fairly often- usually the Penn Line MARC trains to Washington but I've done the train trip to Boston, NYC and Philly a few times. Train travel is a breeze for convenience when you live near a station, and glad it's only gotten safer. One nitpick though: the state is pronounced "MAIR-ih-land" with the Y making a soft sound like in the word "it" or "if", not like the name Mary.
I took the Acela to Boston once from Philly and yeah the train beats the crap out of driving or the TSA rectal exam at PHL.
I grew up a mile from the crash site, I remember it well. My old neighbor used to Ricky Gates speaking at AA meetings frequently in nearby Essex.
My understanding is that this incident not only ushered in random drug testing for railway workers but also police and fire.
When I was younger, I worked at a theme park running rides, including rollercoasters and little kiddie's rides. I also liked to party and particularly liked smoking weed. That said, I wouldn't dream of operating a ride with kids on it while high. I'd work the bar of a pub while stoned, I was even a projectionist running old cinema equipment and was regularly high there, but where you're responsible for other peoples' safety, that's a big no. Both these guys deserved a long prison sentence.
5 years was a bit of a kick in the teeth especially since they caused the crash they should have both got sentenced & being more than 5 years aswell
@@jasinere35 I'm pretty sure they'd get closer to 10 years here in the UK where it would be manslaughter. Maybe with good behaviour they'd serve closer to 5 years in the end anyway, but given the criminal negligence and the scale of the disaster, it clearly justifies maximum sentence. And the idea of one getting off scot free so he can secure the conviction of the other, that's just horrendous. Both are equally guilty and should be treated as such.
@ongbonga9025 I would have sacked you in an instant for that.
@@reddwarfer999 You'd have sacked me for not getting high? You sound like a great boss.
@@ongbonga9025 I would have sacked you for getting high working in the pub and as a projectionist, just as you said you did.
Thank you Fascinating Horror, for all that you do!
👍👍❤️
I was on the outbound that crashed at Granville in Sydney Australia. Ptsd stopped about a decade after the incident.
Still the worst train accident in Australian history
I thought it was horrendous that he only served 4 years for that, until it was mentioned that he came clean and became a counselor. ☑️
How does that absolve him of his crime?
@@mikepalmer2219, it doesn't absolve him. But isn't the purpose of incarceration partly for rehabilitation?
There is such a thing as punishment as well. He killed many people and ruined many families. Serving a short sentence means nothing. He is lucky someone has not avenged their lost family members.
@@patriciamariemitchel I wonder if youd feel the same way if you were on that train, or if one of your loved ones died in the incident
This was a failure of justice - guy should have been locked up for life, simple as that
@@goonmaster9000 This is the second most asinine comment I've read so far. He was let out for good behavior and did everything he possibly could to atone for his sins, and is doing it quite well actually. If he had shown no remorse, then it would be a different story. But he paid for his consequences and learned from them, and is actively helping to improve his and other's lives. You pretend that personal growth is non-existent. Your cruelty is absurd.
It took a long time for this country to take ‘drinking on the job’ serious. This is in ‘87, likely somebody knew of the issue & just looked the other way. The ‘good ole boy’ thing is still going on today!
Thank you for a great video as always. Have you ever considered covering Amtrak #188? I was on that train in 2015 and have never seen anyone cover it. It was also a NE Corridor train. Fascinating story of how positive train control was finally introduced into the NE Corridor, the only stretch of track in the United States that Amtrak owns. Thanks again for your amazing work. I always look forward to new videos from you.
It's good that these things are remembered. In my country there was a rail collision between two trains in which 24 people died which was completely forgotten until the 25th anniversary in 2011, then people thought "oh yeah, that happened" and it was the subject of some newspaper articles and a television programme. It had happened on the national day of remembrance which is why it didn't get much attention over the years. I lived nearby so I once visited the location.
We’ll done. Interesting to hear it pronounced Mary-land. On this side of the pond most people would say something like Mare-ih-lund.
This is like that guy who passes you and then slams on the brakes...
Does it seem to anyone else that a lot of these disasters happen right around the holidays - Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, etc.? Is there a tendency for more negligence then? Or do we remember those better because it is so poignant when the passengers never get home for Christmas or see the new year they've just been celebrating?
The 2004 Mega Tsunami happened around Christmas too.
Maybe it's a combination of a lot of people traveling, occasionally companies overbooking to make more money and we remember tragedies associated with big events a lot more. In any case it's very tragic to think about being in a mindset of getting to enjoy life only to have it cut short by factors beyond one's control.
I lived 10 minutes away from where that accident was. I can still remember that day. People trapped pinned in the wreckage half alive, half dead. It was unbelievable. I was working at an apartment complex close by too the accident
Another great video. Thank you for all your efforts to inform us of these tragedies. I admit, I'm surprised the toll of this one wasn't higher, it's lucky the coaches at the front were almost empty.
Ah yes that time of the week. Thank you FH!
1:40 the night owl was recently brought back, and then quickly went away again..
I live in Newport News and we still have that Amtrak station..I never heard of this story until now...thanks for sharing Fascinating Horror...I look forward to your videos
I like this channel. I wish he posted more often.
Yeah!
It takes a lot of time to do quality posts. I prefer quality over quantity.
Great content as always. Any chance you could do a vid about non-fatal accidents but with lots of injured? Sometime the lack of a fatality makes bad things seem better than they were.
There was a deadly train crash in my city yesterday. It fell off an overpass crushing a truck.
I was only 5 years old when this horrible accident happened. I always loved seeing the Amtrak Trains and still do. I’m glad Justice was served and REGULATIONS were put into place. 💯👀💅🏾
Each week I really look forward to your videos. Well researched, narrated and presented. And the background musicis so cool, and become iconic to your channel. Each incident you present is interesting, sad and tragic, but interesting, and given we are in Australia, we get to learn much about whats happened in the worlld over time. Thankyou!
Allô, if i may ask you to make a vidio about the Lake Mégantic in the province of Québec Canada. Was a real and still in our memories from the desaster. Thank you so much for all your work.
I remember this well. I was a senior in HS in the DC area. Didn't know until now it was caused by potheads.
I lived in Maryland when this happened, and I still remember it clearly.
Why was the lady stepping on that man?
And by the way, it is pronounced " mareland " , not Mary land. And wasn't the location Chevy Chase Maryland?
@@gregggoss2210 it actually did happen in Chase, Maryland.
@@gregggoss2210 Chevy Chase is a DC suburb. Chase is an unincorporated area north of Baltimore and along the Gunpowder River
YOOOOO this is right near me i’m so happy someone’s covering it
So when you commit a crime with someone else, whee you're equally responsible, you just tell on the other one and are free to go? How?!? That's so stupid, how corrupt is the system?
i’m from maryland and even still we talk about this
i’m 20 so obviously i wasn’t alive at the time of the crash but i was taking the amtrak to georgia one time and my teacher talked about the chase train crash
Ricky Gates is a name known to most railroaders of that time period. If anything positive came out of this, drug & alcohol abuse among railroad employees was taken seriously once Federal testing was mandated. Unfortunately younger employees aren't aware of this and don't grasp this is why railroads now drug test. Some companies claim they do, but railroads actually do it as it mandated.
I'm glad he got himself turned around and works to do good, but it surprises me that engineers responsible for fatal crashes aren't hit with harsher penalties. If you killed 16 people due to drunk/high driving, you'd be in much worse trouble. And that Bostian guy who sent his train flying off the tracks in 2015, killing eight, injuring well over 100 and had no explanation why was completely let off. I don't mean to sound out for blood, but I don't see how you can do something like that, say "stuff happens," and just walk away.
@@ressljs The FRA has no authority over criminal matters. That’s up to the discretion of the local DA and few seem willing to pursue that avenue. Not the first time a crew member has been responsible for a someone’s death from negligence and wasn’t held accountable criminally. What most train crew don’t realize is that their Union Dues don’t cover criminal matters. If you were to get charged your on your own financially.
I work for a state workers compensation company. This year in conjunction with our Safety Services team we're going to run Fascinating Horror episodes via Zoom, and in the office. I can't think of a more devilish way for the industry to present work place accidents.
P.S. To the narrator of this marvolus series, your voice sounds nearly identically to the actor, Harry Floyd, who played Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. (Season 1)
Great video, as always. Can you cover the Chatsworth Amtrak crash of 2008?
I literally got an Amtrak ad before this video. Good lord.
That was well done. Do you think you could also do a video on the 2009 DC metro crash?
^Seconding
Thank you for an interesting and informative video. The funny thing is, I’m from this area of Maryland. However, at the time of this crash, I had been living abroad. This was the first time I’ve ever heard of it! I did move back to Maryland after 5 years, by which time I suppose the story had died down. The internet at its best, learning things I missed while abroad!
That one guy said that a woman trampled him. Do you think it would hurt if a woman tramples anyone?
Perfect timing - just sat down with a cuppa- lovely ☺️
My friends father was a firefighter at the time. He told me that they would just find random body parts over the ground, and how it was the worst thing any of them have ever seen. The most striking part, however, is when his captain told him to go down and search a road going into the woods. After walking through the clearing, he found a detached car, and it wasnt a road at all, the train car just plowed through massive trees and bush, flattening everything for almost a mile.
If you haven't done it, I would like to see you do an episode on the CSX 8888 runaway train incident.
Because of this crash, Conrail from that point to it's 1999 split pulled most of their freight trains of the NEC. Because of this move, the Potomac Yard (across
the Potomac River from DC) became a victim of this shift. Known locally as the POT Yard, it's services were no longer needed. Today, DC Metro has a station stop there to remind people what was once there!😔
I was supposed to take this train but I overslept and planned to take the next train. When we got to the New Carrollton station they would not tell us what happened. They just said the track was closed and we could take a very long bus ride to NYC. We went back to a restaurant/bar in Annapolis and my ride had a brother driving up to NY that night. When we walked into the bar everyone was wide eyed and said my parents had been calling to see if anyone knew if I had been on the train. I had recently moved to NYC and was visiting my family home and friends in and near Annapolis. I had work. downtown the next morning. My parents were gone on a ski trip and were very worried.
Small note, but the way us Marylanders pronounce it is "Mar-eh-land," rather than "Mary land" (despite it admittedly being spelled that way lol).
16 deaths is amazingly low considering the size and speed of the trains.
I remember this very well. Not long after, Conrail removed all freight off the NEC
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Remember this when it happened. This was the start of drug testing for all types of occupations. I had a commercial driver license and remember people losing jobs because they smoked off the job and sometimes days before.
Well, so much for no ads!
Jesus christ, that image of the burnt out AEM-7 is haunting
Please don't use The Lord's Name in vain.
@@mph1ish Jesus christ you're a christian fanatic.
@@mph1ishYeah, don't anger mph's sky fairy!
@@mph1ishif you’re gonna act that way, the Internet ain’t for you, pal.
@@nottelling8129 If you're gonna act that way, then heaven ain't for you , PAL.
Aside from corporate liability another theme of Fascinating Horror's videos is safety rules are written in blood.
I remember this accident, for I live in MD.. it was four years after I graduated HS.
You can put all the safety features you want. But ultimately it is still in the operators hands to maintain control and so things safely.
One of the highest causes of crashes and accidents is often operator error.
I worked emergency services in a town in New England years ago. There was a train line running through town that serviced Amtrak. Amtrak Authority provided training for us; those dudes are no joke. The rules were simple: stay off the rails, if something is wrong with the rails call us immediately no matter how trivial, do not try to fix a broken crossing without direct instructions from us (we had a standing order for one that consisted entirely of "push up gently on the crossing arm with one hand"). Then they showed us a video of a woman getting hit by a train; she exploded, and her disembodied legs nearly killed a reporter. In town speed for a train is 25mph even though it looks like it's doing 3 and it will destroy you. They don't care if you're dumb enough to get hit, they didn't even seem overly concerned about their stuff being broken, but traumatizing their engineers and potentially killing passengers? Aw heck no.
I have worked at the chase fire station the pictures they have are wild!!!!!
I've never heard of this one before. Really horrifying!
Bros were blazed
Omg I was not expecting my small va town to be part of this video 😲😂
Only served 4 years for killing 16 people and recklessly endangering the rest while under the influence. Really...
When I became a volunteer firefighter in 2000, we went over the rescue operations of this crash. I remember being horrified by the pictures and videos of this. This crash led to a lot of rescue tool companies like Holmatro (aka Jaws of Life) to start designing tools that were capable of cutting into the heavy stainless steel of railcars. Today, many of these tools apply well over 60,000 pounds of hydraulic cutting and spreading pressure, and battery-powered saws contain heavy metal cutting blades capable of breaking through the steel and the heavy glass windows. Rescue procedures for rail accidents have greatly changed in the last 30+ years. Sadly, as often happens in emergency services, people have to die for something to effectively change.
I remember this. I lived in Northern Virginia at the time and it was all over the news. I was 30 at the time so it really stayed with me.
As for some of the locomotives in the crash, Conrail 5045 was totally destroyed and was never rebuilt. Not only that, but both AEM-7s 903 and 900 plus a few of the coaches involved were also deemed a total loss and scrapped.
You’ve got a really nice presenting voice and I’m enjoying your videos well done
I heard Gunpowder River, and for a second I wondered if this was a train disaster video or an industrial disaster video about bad handling of explosive chemicals.