Commute Cock-Up

This morning I actually managed to catch the 8:01 train that takes me directly to Brooklyn without the tedious need to change trains at Jamaica. I was, I thought, going to be early to work for once this week.

Well, that was the plan.

It survived contact with real life for about 45 minutes, just long enough for our engineer to spot the dead body lying at the side of the tracks and bring our train to a halt.

Apparently, maintenance crews had reported a guy stealing cable from the tunnels that morning, and had given chase but had lost contact with the theiving git and given up the search. As a precaution, our train's engineer was asked to reduce speed through that section of the tunnels and report any dangling or otherwise damaged cables he could see. We never found out if he saw any cable, because the shock of seeing the body caused him quite a bit of anguish.

The railroad, having finally been informed of the situation (there was initially some trouble getting radio contact with the higher echelons) promptly suspended service on both tracks, shut down the third rail on ours and thereby stranded us with no air conditioning while we waited for police to arrive, which took another twenty minutes. During this time the high command sent the driver and another crewman out to ascertain whether the idiot corpse has become unliving as a result of being hit by a train or by touching the third rail. From what I could overhear, which was just about everything since I was seated behind the cab and no-one was keeping their voices down, the dead man had suffered massive head trauma from what appeared to be contact with a fast moving train. That said, the body was wedged between the third rail and the wall and there was a definite stench of burned hair in the air. I'm told this was fortunate, as the ex-thief stank to high heaven and most of the way back. Whether the nitwit was struck by a train, then incinerated by a spot of third rail contact, was electrocuted and fell into the path of a train post mortem or was simply struck by a train while something else fell on the third rail and burned I don't know¹.

Each time the crew opened the door to the cab, which at this time was configured to block the forward view, there would be a surge of gawkers trying to get a glimpse of the horror. Periodically, this not being a problem directly attributable to the LIRR and therefore something they could talk about, we got informed that we were waiting for the police. The guard spoke of "a fatality on the tracks". I pondered over the question of when we began using this term as a euphamism for "body". After all, what the guard was really saying was "There's a dead idiot on the tracks". Not much of an earth shattering revelation I agree, but Mr Brain was just enfatalitying time. More waiting in a steadily warming train. More promises of police.

Who eventually arrived in force, and who required another thirty minutes to properly assess the scene. While this was happening, the crew announced that we would soon be running backwards to East New York where we would be transferred to another train, which would run down the other track. The other track still had power, but no trains were yet allowed down it on account of there were now about fifteen people running around out there, a maintenance crew, some EMTs and a fire marshall having arrived in theater during the course of events.

Eventually we did move, west towards Brooklyn rather than back east to East New York. I smiled, which attracted a comment from a fellow passenger as to why. I explained that I had just remembered that the last three times I'd been held up on an LIRR train, a plan had been formulated, explained several times at great length, then the train had eventually simply gone where it was supposed to in the first place. From this we could infer that the LIRR's stated policy during emergencies is to formulate plans as camoflage for waiting until whatever problem is plaguing them to go away, then carry on as normal.

When we got to Brooklyn, I was amused to see how many people checked out the front of the train for blood. Those not in the first car would not know that the fatality was not caused by our own train, but had just been found by it. There seemed to be an air of disappointment about those who couldn't see any hard evidence of the grisly death.

So it was that although I took an earlier train than any I caught this week, I ended up getting to work two hours late thanks to an idiot with an eye for the main chance but none for the trains.

1. I don't care either, since I think that it was just come-uppance for a thief who was endangering my life by compromising the electrical integrity of whatever it was. Block detection? Signaling? Communications? Whatever it was, it was needed for whatever job it was installed for and any light-fingered git endangering my life by nicking bits of it got what was coming ↑