North Shore Scenic Railroad Disrupted By Amateur Photographers on Railroad Tracks
A lot of people like to take photos near railroad tracks. This has always been a bad idea. I found an article that says over 20 people have died while taking their photos on a railroad track in the last year. Trains can't stop on a dime, in fact, it can take about a mile for a train to stop. You would think that you would hear a train coming in plenty of time, but that's not always the case.
The North Shore Scenic Railroad recently shared a post on Facebook about some amateur photographers causing problems on the North Shore Scenic Railway. The train had to actually stop because of people trespassing and taking photos while sitting on the railroad track.
It looks like a couple with a photographer got through the fence along the lakewalk to get to the railroad track. You can see in one of the photos that were shared that the couple was posing for a photo while the photographer was sitting on the railroad tracks.
The train had to stop because of the trespassers. The train had to go into emergency mode because of the disruption. The North Shore Scenic Railroad wants to remind people that it is not only incredibly dangerous but also illegal to walk on train tracks without permission.
I spoke with Ken Beuhler from the North Shore Scenic Railroad over the phone today about this incident. Ken says that it happens a couple of times a summer. If they are able to catch the people they do press charges for trespassing as it's so dangerous. The group in this photo was also spotted down near the Fitgers complex on the tracks, which is particularly dangerous because that's where they can get trapped and not be able to escape an oncoming train.
I asked Ken how often this happens, and he said in a typical summer there will be a couple if not more incidents.
Many people commented on the Facebook post, and many of them consider themselves professional photographers. Pros know not to mess with train tracks. It's especially sad to see how many high school seniors have died while taking their grad photos on railroad tracks. Seriously, there are a lot of cases.
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