Remember when kids just took cars for joyrides?

shortyb

shortyb

Joined
Dec 15, 2002
Messages
2,849
Location
Retiredville SC
I was talking with a conductor friend of mine yesterday as he switched and spotted cars on the local short line railroad next to my neighborhood. He asked if I had heard about the kids that stole the train and drove it around, then crashed it into parked railcars at the yard. Excuse me? Yeah, stole a freaking real live TRAIN! Seems these 2 kids, age around 15, thought it would be great fun to joyride around in a train. They broke into the CSX interchange yard with our short line, Carolina Piedmont in Laurens SC, boarded a 3 locomotive consist parked at the yard, and started them up (learned how to do that on YouTube of course :rolleyes:). They were able to get them moving and proceeded to drive around the yard in them, eventually getting onto Carolina Piedmont's mainline to Greenville. After a few miles, they returned to the yard, but weren't as saavy with how to stop almost 1000 tons of rolling steel at about 20mph before striking several parked railcars and derailing both the cars and the lead locomotive. Seems this did quite a bit of damage, conductor friend said, estimates were over $1M because the crumpled locomotive front end, the struck railcar (which was deemed a total loss) and damage to the trackage. Wow.

While these kids will have a neat story to tell their grandkids, for now they are getting to think about their stupid reindeer games while incarcerated at the SC Department of Juvenile Justice Facility in Columbia SC. Charges include burglary second degree, grand larceny over $10K, malicious damage to property, willful destruction to railroad property, and injury to a railroad.

https://www.trains.com/pro/freight/...aling-derailing-locomotive-in-south-carolina/
 
I remember teens stole a train years ago in Ohio but at least knew what they were doing. Looked it up cut and paste pic.
IMG_4216.webp
 
Kira said:
Trains run on rails.
How did the little darlings "proceed to drive around the yard"?
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They probably went back and forth, throwing switches as they encountered them. It's a small shortline railroad so I doubt anything they did needed the dispatcher to line them up.

Of course, and it probably goes without saying - they probably filmed the whole event. Gotta get those Youtube views, don't ya know!
 
Remember that kid that was stealing airplanes? Colton Harris-Moore committed 67 felonies in three different countries by stealing 6 airplanes, 19 cars, and robbing over 34 homes. And stole boats, too.
 
Does a locomotive by itself have any sort of friction brakes, or would you need to reverse the drive to stop it?
 
About the 3rd time I was the special kid in the hallway with my history teacher - he proceeded to tell me some of his teen pranks - one of them greasing railroad tracks uphill 🙄
 
Way back in '82, when I was 14, my older brother's friend left his 1972 Trans Am parked in our front yard when he and my brother took off for.... somewhere. The keys were in the ignition (they always were, sometimes we would hide them as a joke). Bad move. The thought of crashing it was foremost and the thought of getting caught I dont think ever crossed my mind. I wasnt gone long, but it was fun while it lasted, and I made sure to put it back exactly where it was.

Taking a freaking train?? I cannot imagine. Seems like CTC would have noticed this long before they got anywhere, on the other hand I know nothing about traffic control for trains and have done absolutely no research.
 
What we need is a private rail track where you can drive a train and crash it into cars, brick walls, etc. Not sure how legal this would be but it would be part of my "MAN LAND" theme park.

Additional MAN related activities would include:
  • Driving bulldozers over cars
  • Blowing things up
  • High power lasers (for what? IDK)
  • Drone target practice
  • Flame thrower party
 
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In my state the kids would not be in jail. They would have been released into the custody of their parents/guardians.

Kids at that age sure don't realize the ramifications of their actions.
 
PF52 said:
It has its own independent air brake, plus a handbrake applied with a wheel or a lever.
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So if you only know to pull the regular air brake lever, it wouldn't do anything here since it only brakes the cars. You'd need to know about the separate brake.
 
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