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Letter Re: Rail Cars
Mr. Rawles,
The letter recently posted on your blog about using the rails for
bugging out was quite interesting, and your strong admonitions about
safety were well founded. There are considerations the author did
not include
and additional safety items that need to be mentioned as well. I conducted
security operations for railroads in the late 70s and also have written
about railroad history so I have experience "out on the line."
First, the rails do not necessarily take you to places that you need/want
to go. Rail lines, especially here in the west, are located in out-of-the-way
places. Road access to the rails in many locations is nonexistent meaning
that someone bugging-out could find himself stranded where there is
literally nothing and no practical way to get anywhere else. If you
roll your
vehicle descending or climbing the roadbed, there will be no help available;
your best hope is that crews will eventually find your remains.
Navigating the roadbed. Rails do not sit flat on the ground, they sit
atop a carefully constructed roadbed of rock ballast that promotes
drainage. This ballast effectively raises the rail four to five feet
above the surrounding ground and is quite steeply graded. Driving off
of the rail will mean pitching your vehicle at an uncomfortable, potentially
dangerous, angle to start down the roadbed. Once off the roadbed, there
is not always a vehicle road parallel to the rail road. So if you way
is blocked by a stalled train, you may not be able to get around it.
Stopping your Hy-Rail. Steel wheels rolling on steel rails do not stop
as fast as rubber tires on pavement. Discovering the end of a train
just around a curve may not afford the driver sufficient time to stop.
Hitting the end of a train with a vehicle is catastrophic. (One of
my employees did just that in the late 1970s and it cost me a fortune).
Also,
trains are incredibly quiet, surprisingly so. The driver could easily
find a train running at him just around the next curve and never hear
it until he is 100 yards from it.
Wandering the rails. Rail lines invariably head for major cities; that
is where the goods they carry need to go. Rail lines, generally,
do not go through the best parts of towns. If someone bugging-out
has to traverse a city to get to his or her retreat, they will be exposing
themselves
to unnecessary risks in those parts of town.
If it sounds like I do not think using the rails for a travel route
is a good idea, you would be correct. I have spent considerable time
driving on the rails and have encountered these problems first hand.
The rails are not a hospitable place for vehicles with or without Hy-Rail
equipment. - Bruce C.
