Sorry for being dense, what's an IJ?

A friend of mine as a kid would put penny's on the track for UP streamliners running at speed to squish, but could never find the penny afterword. One time he forced himself to keep looking at the penny, and mystery solved! The bow wave of air from the high speed train picked up the penny which the nose of the E unit hit and sent flying off into the desert.

I think he meant Insulated Joint?

JR

Of course! I can see a signal maintainer being upset over that.

The flattened penny thing was a big thing when I was a kid and the SRR (later NS) steam programs were going. I thought it sort of went by the wayside but it's seemed to become a thing again.
I never understood it.

When I was working at a tourist railroad people would put pennies on the track by the platform and then crawl under the train to get the pennies after the train had just stopped on the platform. I saw this maybe 3 times a year or so? Once I went from the ticket booth and told the kid who had gone to get the pennies in a nice / educational tone that he should never climb on or under railroad equipment no matter what because it was dangerous because you never know when the train is going to move. The parents wrote an email complaining that I made them look like bad parents in front of their kid because they told the kid to get the penny. No joke I got in trouble for that.

I saw kids putting pennies on the track when chasing the big boy... it was close enough to be whistling for the kids to get off the track. Parents just said “oh you better hurry” :-/

When I was with TVRM, I saw a guest come within a nanosecond of losing a hand. Husband and wife were there with their daughter-he had put a coin on the track and was reaching under the wheel of one of the tender's trucks to retrieve the coin. I happened to see this as I was walking down the platform towards the turntable. I immediately shouted at him to "get his hand out of there", as I was a couple of coach lengths from him. The man just managed to get his hand clear before the locomotive moved off towards the turntable. When I got to where they were, I told him that he had come within a nanosecond of losing his hand and left it at that. I saw the expression on his wife's face and if looks could kill, he'd have been a dead man.

We never really had issues with passengers going under the equipment. The bigger issue was keeping people from climbing on the locomotives and cars in our main yard, but that was pretty well addressed by bolting removable sheet metal covers over the ladders with "DO NOT CLIMB" messages posted.

As for photo run bys, we would have the trainmen police the photo lines and inform the photographers as required that failure to keep the designated distance back would result in the termination of the run by. Many of our excursion passengers were "regulars", so we had no problem enforcing the photo line-no one wanted to be "THAT GUY".

Way back in the olden days when I was a kid, a long time ago, I put a penny on the rail a couple of hundred feet in front of Reading No. 2124 at a photo stop. When the train left, the engine slipped just as it ran over my penny. The result was a a strip of copper foil about six inches long. I wonder whatever happened to it? It's gone now.

Parents can be so odd, they alone feel they're the sole deciders of right/wrong and how flipping dare anyone else suggest they know better than the parents do?
I was a volunteer at an airshow a couple of years back, with a WW2 camp display that included my own WW2 Jeep and assorted stuff.
Anyway, I was walking around the grounds after getting some lunch, and I saw a mother backing their ankle-biter right up to a plane's propeller (and leaning against it) just as the pilot was getting ready to fire it up. His fire watch/ground guide was distracted with someone asking them questions. I ran up and waved the pilot to stop his engine start (which he did; smart man) then ran over to the mother and told her she just came within a moment of watching her son get chopped into pieces from the knees up.
As you can all imagine, her anger didn't go within, it went to me instead. How dare I tell her anything, she screamed. She almost had a stroke when the pilot and fire watch came around and joined in against her. The pilot said, pointing at me, "Instead of yelling at him, you should be thanking him because he just saved your son's life."
The son, being a kid, thought the whole thing was funny. I couldn't blame him, nobody gets stuff like that at his age.
The mother, in an attempt at having the last word, said she was going file a 'formal complaint' against the air show people about me. I replied, "Yeah, good luck with that, lady. You'll be complaining that I stopped you from watching your son die horribly," and the pilot and fire watch agreed. She went off in a huff, never once realizing she was in the wrong.
I can only imagine how she told the story later on.

My brother and I grew up around airplanes-both parents have their licenses. As kids, it was expected that we'd wander about the home airport and we were taught three cardinal rules about being on the ramp.

One-Do not go out on the ramp unless you need to.

Two-Never ever get in close proximity to a stationary propeller or turbine engine air intake unless absolutely necessary.

Three-When on the ramp, look at each airplane's navigation/anti collision lights. If they are on, STAY AWAY. That is the danger signal-the airplane is about to start engines.

On propeller driven aircraft, the aircraft is not safe to approach until the Master Switch and battery switch are opened. If they are in the closed position, there remains a chance (however remote) that the engine can start. It's not worth risking your life.

Used to work for a tourist line. I would shamelessly swipe coins off the track and pocket them so they couldn't put them back. Good way to get a soda on a busy day.

Yep. I worked as a streetcar motorman for a few
years on the historic line in Ybor City, downtown Tampa, Fl.

Those tracks go right past a Hooters bar and grill.

The patrons at Hooters had started putting coins on
the streetcar track. Many a late night as I was
passing that location, I'd spot some freshly placed coins,
stop the car, open the door, walk out and get them
all. Then I'd smile and wave at the people sitting at
the outdoor tables nearby and thank them.

They'd started putting quarters on there.

I got cured of putting coins on the track for steam locos to run over as a teen when one time, in the pre-retention toilet days, a passenger dumped a hopper over where I had put a coin. I didn't bother to try and find the coin.

nope the family would sue and most likely win a couple of million. It happened to a CSX train hit a teenager on a bridge that was clearely marked no tresspassing. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.jackso ... ate=ampart

Over the last year in Tacoma, WA two pedesrians have been killed at the same crossing. In both cases they waited for a train then went around the gates and steped in front of a train on the other track. The news reports made it clear that the gates were down, lights flashing and bell ringing. Then the reports went on to say that the people were not "inatentive" and that the deaths were entirely the railroad's (or the city's) fault because it is physicaly possibel to get around the gate. There was no mention of waiting untill the gates were up or looking both ways or any other safty measures. Just flat out it was not the fault of the pedestrians involved.

Speculation on my part: If a news report even hints the victem was at fault they might get sued.

Pedestrians around a railway cannot be relied upon to have appropriate situational awareness. Too many other things can distract them – and it’s not just cell phone cameras. You also cannot presume that they understand anything about railway operations, such as operational clearances or that there might be a second train coming from the opposite direction. It’s easy to say that they were trespassing, but at a highway grade crossing, they are NOT trespassing so long as they are in the designated pedestrian path. You therefore need to be certain the configuration of your grade crossings, including pedestrian areas, meet or exceed whatever standards were in effect when the crossing was last reconstructed.

I learned this about 30 years ago, when on a dark and rainy night, a jogger wearing a dark hoodie was struck and killed by a light rail car at a crossing my company had designed ten years earlier. He was wearing headphones tuned to the local hard rock station at high volume. Plus, 45 minutes into his run, he was totally into his “runner’s zone”. Oblivious to the seven – count ‘em – SEVEN sets of flashing lights around the crossing, he ran right in front of an LRV. The widow hired a personal injury attorney who proceeded to sue everybody imaginable, including my employer. While I actually had nothing to do with the design of the crossing warning system, as the “last man standing” who had any involvement whatsoever with the project, I was assigned to work with the attorneys on our defense. Testimony revealed that this was the jogger’s regular running route and that he had likely crossed the tracks at this location hundreds of times. While the jury eventually decided we could have done better with the design of the crossing warning system, such as incorporating warning devices which were specifically targeted at pedestrians, they agreed that we had met the requirements of the applicable codes in effect at the time the crossing was built. They then made an additional determination that the deceased was 100% responsible for his own death. We dodged a bullet.

Fast forward to a decade later. Best practices for railway crossings, particularly with respect to how they interface with pedestrians, had advanced significantly. I was reviewing a set of drawings for another light rail project, designed by a different consulting firm. That project included a "quiet zone" crossing with constrained lines-of-sight - a combination I believed would be particularly hazardous to any inattentive pedestrians. I included that observation in my written comments back to the design team. That comment was ignored. About a year later, just before the line was opened to revenue service, a young teenage girl, apparently deep into a conversation with her walking companion, was struck and killed by a light rail test train – pretty much exactly as I had predicted might happen. I told our legal counsel where to find my comments. The transit agency and the designer-of-record very quickly and quietly settled with the family out of court. I got absolutely no satisfaction out of saying “I told you so.” The pedestrian portion of the crossing has since been reconfigured to match state-of-the-art.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.