Ghost Trains Ride Alone – “Railroad #OhioChernobyl” and Greece Deadly Crash

If “a picture is worth a thousand words,” the price paid by our dead loved ones speaks volumes as to their killers. The bittersweet taste lingering in the mouths of those who are thankful to be alive is overshadowed by what they fear awaits. And still the trains ride. Alone, or with ghosts?     

“Blow the whistle, blow the whistle!” I yelled signaling with my arm up and down in the air at the man at the head of train. As I got closer I grew excited hearing the sound of the locomotion and seeing it race in front of me as the whistle blew. It then grew quieter and smaller as it rode off into the horizon.  

And then it was gone. Suddenly, I too was swept away. My Grand Papa picked me up with such force, I thought for a second it was the power of the train pulling me away with it.

I want to be the captain of trains! I said to my Grand Papa.  

“It’s a pretty big job my little conductor. Why?”

Looks like fun. And when I do I won’t let my brothers ride with me.

“Why is that,” he asked.

They never let me play with their train sets.

“Well, there’s more to trains than playing and riding them,” he said.  

“See, in the heartlands, Farmers’ hands sow and reap the fruits and vegetables we eat and the Train Conductors and Engineers guide and transport it. But as I sense with farming, railroads will not be as when I was a little boy or you now as a little girl.”

“Best you find one of your clever ways of playing with your brothers’ toys. I’m afraid the Train Conductor you waived goodbye to will in time ride no more.”

But who will ride the trains Grand Papa, I asked?

With a sad look towards the sun setting in the horizon he replied, “Ghost Trains ride alone.”

MANMADE DISASTERS

“Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin’ at the rain
A little out of touch, little insane
It’s just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never goin’ back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I’m neither here nor there…”

People of East Palestine are speaking. Listen: “It almost seems back to normal, except we all have this looming hazardous cloud, not knowing what it’s going to do to our future, hanging over our heads,” said Dianna Elzer, whose home is about 600 yards from the site in. (NPR) Just north of the Mediterranean Sea, we discover a “Greece train crash: 57 people confirmed dead as public anger grows.”

We find “Two women, Elisavet, 60, and Georgia, 59, were sitting on the steps outside the hospital awaiting word about their sister, who worked as a ticket inspector and had been on the Athens-Thessaloniki train.”

“The worst thing is this awful waiting,” said Georgia, who had arrived in Larissa in the morning from Corfu. “They won’t tell us anything.”

Says Elisavet: “The myth about the safety of traveling by train has finally collapsed.” Sadly, it’s taken the lives of many in the process.

“So tired that I couldn’t even sleep
So many secrets I couldn’t keep
Promised myself I wouldn’t weep
One more promise I couldn’t keep…

Can you help me remember how to smile?
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded?
Life’s mystery seems so faded…”

Railroad companies appear to be firing up MANMADE DISASTERS. The citizens of East Palestine understand this all too well: “it was like the gates of hell opened up” and “a family — a father, mother and 3-year-old girl — stood on another corner holding posters suggesting the E.P.A. had orchestrated the controlled burn of the chemicals just to get trains running again, declaring that “The EPA nuked a town to open the Railroad #OhioChernobyl.”

In the February 23, 2023 NTSB Preliminary Report, “Norfolk Southern Railway Train Derailment with Subsequent Hazardous Material Release and Fires,” it is important to note “The NTSB is not involved in air monitoring, testing of water quality, environmental remediation, or evacuation orders. Questions on environmental issues should be referred to the Environmental Protection Agency.”

But if the head of the EPA and the DOT delayed in showing up and waited until it was safe, who the hell takes charge?

Adding insult to injury, former President Trump, who took to the ole ‘slash-and-burn’ of railroad regulations that were meant to protect workers and communities from manmade disasters, showed up with plastic water bottles? Gee, thanks.

For excellent in depth reporting by David Sirota, Julia Rock, Rebecca Burns & Matthew Cunningham-Cook, read The Lever February 8, 2023 article “Rail Companies Blocked Safety Rules Before Ohio Derailment.”

But the roots of these shenanigans go back 40 years. Let’s not forget the Democrat from West Virginia, Harley Staggers. Thanks to Harley Chairing the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Staggers Rail Act, regulation became history.

But it didn’t stop with the rails, the roads and airlines got in on ride while the getting was good. Difference is lobbyists took an even stronger hold on Congress.

Town hall on 2.22.2023, Alan Shaw, CEO Norfolk Southern appeared unable to answer the voices of East Palestine Lifelong Residents. Only to say, “were gonna get the cleanup right.” How long? Ask Flynt Michigan.

EPAs failure to go in ASAP may have allowed the opportunity of a cover up under the guise of clean up. Or, was agency working in cahoots with Norfolk? Says the New York Time “state officials agreed to the company’s request to intentionally burn some of the chemicals to defuse the threat of an explosion that could have sent shrapnel and toxic fumes flying.”

Lawyers are sure to want to assess statements for documentation. However, businesses having a vested interest in their supplies being transported may also find the data helpful in assessing long term effects of their product/materials on unwitting members of the public at large. (See below, 2021 Principal Operating Revenue Sources).

Like the water in Flynt Michigan, toxins in water or airborne in East Palestine make an ideal opportunity to experiment and track individuals and groups. In time, the health ramifications of the citizens of East Palestine will manifest themselves. Cancer? Like with Covid, BIG PHARMA will be ready to super charge and vac you.

Reports by NPR rightly cause immediate alert and concern. “The release of chemicals caused the deaths of 3,500 fish in the days following the derailment, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources estimated.”

Look, humans are not fish but to hear the Ohio EPA director Anne Vogel refer to the people as customers says a lot about how she sees the community and Ohio River. “We’re pretty confident that these low levels are not getting passed onto the customers.” Suddenly the image of a fish with the face of the EPA pops out of the water with a baited hook from Michigan’s former Governor.

BBC reports also do not inspire confidence of EPA. “It certainly feels like state and local regulators moved too quickly to give the green light to people to go back,” said David Masur, executive director of the Penn Environment Research & Policy Center.

EPA and NTSB: Listen, Conductors and Engineers Are Blowing the Whistle on Dangerous Railways

“The Surface Transportation Board already knows this; the FRA knows this, the shippers know this; the car owners/lessees know this, the executives know this; and certainly the front line knows all too well: It is impossible to get goods to market in a timely way, when the train has derailed. Monster trains keep derailing to the point where it seems, from almost all the above parties, this has become normalized and acceptable. What other conclusion can one come to: It keeps happening, on a routine basis.” – Matthew DeLay, Class I Locomotive Engineer

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have two factors in common –Independent agencies Congress.

Major difference? NTSB Investigates v EPA Writes regulations that publish and perish with little to no action.

EPA, this is the problem. You have Strategic Plans, Action Plans, Annual Plans etc. BUT WTF HAVE YOU PROTECTED OR ACCOMPLISHED?

“The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.” As the CDC, you’ve failed big time.

If Railroads are paying Congress, who is protected when recommendations ignored?

Norfolk: PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE? 

It was just reported that “NTSB to Open a Special Investigation into Norfolk Southern Railway’s Safety Practices and Culture.” The Board may also find relevant to delve into past reported deadly and toxic derailments.

Recall 2002 Farragut, Tennessee and 2005 Graniteville, South Carolina. Victims included wildlife and nine human beings with thousands injured.

All the talk of looking to the future and tech savvy, railroad companies are still living in the past. No, they did not ‘fall behind.” They took a wrecking ball and gutted the workforce along with safe and smart policies.

“Dare to reimagine what our industry can and will be, with an aspirational – yes, even audacious – vision for its future.” – James A. Squires, Norfolk Southern Chairman, President, and CEO

James, where do YOU see yourself?  I dare you close your eyes. Now ask yourself, how many more must die and suffer before there is NO FUTURE?

My green friends, if BIG BANKS can fail why not BIG RAILWAY CARRIERS?

It is time. As the American Journalist H. D. Lloyd noted in March 1881:

→“The cat must be killed or belled. In either case, it must be confronted by a power greater than itself. There is but one such power.

Our experience in the riots of 1877, in the countless cases of excessive and unfair railroad taxation fairly represented by the case of the Standard Oil Company, and in pools, which have culminated in the Great Trunk Line Executive Committee, makes it clear that an adequate power must be called in to secure these things…”

How? Oh there are so many ways. Just ask the Siliheads in SiliCON J

Or, as my Grand Papa noted above, my devising clever ways of playing with my brothers’ toys. Their trains either ran on batteries or were electric. All it took was the ole ‘switch o rue’ of replacing new batteries with those with low juice or blocking the sockets.

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“Runaway Train” by Soul Asylum

Writer/s: David Pirner
Publisher: DistroKid, Songtrust Ave, Spirit Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind