My friend Bryan Johnson took his family for a ride on today’s excursion run of the New Hope Valley Railway and got some unexpected excitement. A station wagon smashed into the side of the train as the train approached the station.
As Bryan pointed out, the New Hope Valley is a big yellow train moving about 5 MPH across a crossing marked with bells and flashing red lights. We’re not talking about the Acela or Union Pacific Big Boy roaring out of nowhere at 80 MPH.
Check out picture one and picture two of the accident scene.
Update: 9 Jun 2009: Passenger Matt Cooley got a video of the crash. Thanks, Matt!
I was lucky to get a video of the accident as it happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enkh9A5jdUI
Mark, if you add &fmt=18 to the end of a youtube video it will automatically come up in High Quality mode. Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enkh9A5jdUI&fmt=18
But, wow! That driver was NOT paying attention! What an idiot! Thankfully everyone seemed like they were ok.