This is my first time posting, I found this website years ago but never registered, I don't know why.
A little background: I'm a conductor for one of the larger commuter railroads in the Northeastern US. I see a lot of people everyday, most of them are nice, but some make you want to bang their head against the cold, hard steel of a coach vestibule.
This particular story deals with a passenger, but he wasn't an SP (sucky passenger?). I was working a train up from the shore, it was the conductor, 3 ticket collectors (including myself), and the rear brake. It was a Sunday train, and it wasn't very crowded. As I am walking through my car after leaving one of the stations, a man who had been on our train from the very start flags me down and says "I need an ambulance to meet the train in New York, I broke my leg." He reaches down and lifts up his pant leg, and he's got a broken prosthetic leg. It's duct taped in a few places, and it's bent the wrong way. My mouth hit the floor; I was seriously dumbfounded. I did feel bad for the guy though.
So, I go up front and tell the conductor, who radios ahead. Supervision wants the guy off in Newark, and the police meet the train there. Of course, they can't get the guy off the train as he insists on going to New York because that's where his doctor is. He gets to New York where he's met by a swarm of station personnel. I found out later that night that he had gotten on one of our trains with the foot part of the leg broken, transferred to another train, broke the leg some more, got on the train coming back up and then got on my train before he decided he needed help. Only on the railroad...
A little background: I'm a conductor for one of the larger commuter railroads in the Northeastern US. I see a lot of people everyday, most of them are nice, but some make you want to bang their head against the cold, hard steel of a coach vestibule.
This particular story deals with a passenger, but he wasn't an SP (sucky passenger?). I was working a train up from the shore, it was the conductor, 3 ticket collectors (including myself), and the rear brake. It was a Sunday train, and it wasn't very crowded. As I am walking through my car after leaving one of the stations, a man who had been on our train from the very start flags me down and says "I need an ambulance to meet the train in New York, I broke my leg." He reaches down and lifts up his pant leg, and he's got a broken prosthetic leg. It's duct taped in a few places, and it's bent the wrong way. My mouth hit the floor; I was seriously dumbfounded. I did feel bad for the guy though.
So, I go up front and tell the conductor, who radios ahead. Supervision wants the guy off in Newark, and the police meet the train there. Of course, they can't get the guy off the train as he insists on going to New York because that's where his doctor is. He gets to New York where he's met by a swarm of station personnel. I found out later that night that he had gotten on one of our trains with the foot part of the leg broken, transferred to another train, broke the leg some more, got on the train coming back up and then got on my train before he decided he needed help. Only on the railroad...
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