I was reminded of the railroad “Disaster” I caused some time back in the early 80’s. I was in my lower teens, and I was out walking with my friend along the tracks of the Long Island Railroad. It was a summer weeknight, and it was probably 2 A.M. We found a piece of metal cable, probably steel. It was about 3 feet long. So I asked my friend, “Hey, what do you think would happen if we throw the cable on the track so that it touches the ‘third’ rail and one of the regular rails?” The third rail, for those who have never seen one, runs down the middle between two parallel sets of tracks, and it provides the power for the electric trains of the LIRR. So, my buddy throws the cable and it lands perfectly. There was a huge shower of sparks, and the cable was arc-welded to the rails. The crossing gates came down at New Hyde Park Road and Covert Avenue. It seems that the “automatic” system thought that there was a train there, so it brought the gates down, and it would not let trains through that stretch of track. It took the railroad workers about 8 hours to repair the damage. It snarled the morning commute for 10’s of thousands of commuters that day. Also, they had to post police at the lowered gates to direct traffic around the gates.
I never got caught, and I am only coming clean now since the statute of limitations has to have run out after 25-27 years right?
So if you are from Long Island and you remember this event from around 1983, now you know what happened.
My uncle probably had to clean up that mess. He was an electrician for the LIRR, and after I tell him your story he’s going to hunt you down and kick your ass!
Sorry. The thing is, throwing cables on third rails is more a mental addiction than physical. I kicked the habit myself when I stopped hanging out with cable dealers.
I’d still be wary of admitting to this. In all the traffic backups you caused, it seems very likely that at least one emergency vehicle was seriously delayed. Someone could have died due to your “adorable” childhood prank. You still sound proud of this shit; I’m surprised this sobering possibility hasn’t occurred to you.
We admitted we were powerless over railroad shorting—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the cable collections in our basement.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7 Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all railroads, railroad workers, and commuters we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them, others, or cause delays on the line.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we we found a metal cable promptly discarded it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to railroad shorters, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Actually, I can gaurantee that nothing of the sort happened, since we hid in the bushes until the cops showed up to direct traffic around the gates, and saw no ambulances come by in that time, as well as the fact that the nearest hospital has 3 railroad crossings closer than the two that we blocked. The closest railroad crossing to the hospital has an overpass to ensure that ambulances never get blocked by trains.
Which of these is true? You weren’t hidden in the bushes all day long. You also don’t know whether you delayed someone who was having a medical emergency without an ambulance (like say, a woman’s water just broke and her hubby was driving her to the ER). You could have gotten someone fired because they were late to work.
I’m not sure why you created this thread, if you didn’t expect to get called on doing something monumentally fucking stupid and thoughtless. It’s not even relevant whether what you did was legal/illegal. I’m trying to make you aware that what you did was an immoral, shitbag thing to do, because you still don’t seem to understand that.
It’s also possible that, because you delayed traffic, you saved someone’s life by preventing them from making it to a specific intersection until after a car dangerously ran a red light across the intersection from the cross street. However, you could never prove it.
My dad and his friend once derailed a locomotive by laying a railroad spike on the rail. They got caught (because they were standing right there to see what would happen) and were threatened with multiple felonious charges because it was during WWII when tampering with the rails was not a joking matter. I’m not sure what his eventual punishment was; the ending of the story always got kinda vague…
