Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/train-12 ... ation.html

Apparently, he was smushed between two trains. They're thinking he was wearing a box with controls on it and he may have accidentally hit a button that caused one of the trains to move forward, thus crushing him. Workers are claiming stress did this to him because they claim that because of the economy, they're each doing the job of 3 workers nd even the job of one person was too much.

Sounds like the problems I had a Albertsons 4 years ago. They tried putting the weight of 4 people on one person there.

Not sure what type of system CSX uses but the remote controls BNSF uses have a 'man-down' feature. If the box is tilted off its axis an alarm will sound and if nothing is done to correct it within 3 seconds, it will put the train into emergency. That feature can be disabled, for example to hook up air hoses, but in order for that to happen, I believe the reverser on the pack has to be centered (neutral) and the throttle set to 'stop'.

The only thing that comes to mind is that he pitched controls to the other operator (if there was one) and did not request in-between protection. Needless to say a mistake was made and it is a very sad story.