Christopher Bogle is the eyes and ears of downtown London, Ont.
Saturday evening, he was on Richmond Street near Piccadilly Street when he said a group of young adult men approached the CPKC rail crossing with a moving train passing.
He proceeded to get out his phone and start a video.
“A guy started running down the tracks on the other side of the gate while it was down,” said Bogle.
“Then he came back, and he jumped on the train, which is unbelievable. He went down a short distance, got off the train, and then they all came out and thought it was a big joke.”
His video shows the young men taunting the train by touching it and getting very close.
“They saw me filming and I even yelled out to the one guy, ‘You could lose a leg or a life’ and he thought it was a joke.”
He said he immediately had “déjà vu” from three years ago when he witnessed a woman carry her child across a stopped train at this same location.
Rail safety organization Operation Life Saver (OLS) said there have been far too many incidents this year involving trains.
“We’ve seen incidents involving police across the country of train surfing in Alexandria, Ontario,” said Chris Day, national director of OLS.
“Someone was literally riding outside a Via Rail train and the train had to stop inconveniencing hundreds of passengers. In White Rock, B.C., we had families, parents, and children literally crawling underneath a stalled train rather than waiting a few extra minutes. Then the incident that you’re showing from London last night, these are incidents that are entirely preventable.”
Many of these are happening within a month of Rail Safety Week in Canada, which runs from Sept. 15 to 21. Their mission is to get to zero rail crossings, trespassing, deaths, and injuries.
“In the first half of the year, trespassing incidents are up 46 per cent over the five-year historical average, and serious injuries related to trespassing are up more than double the five-year historical average,” said Day.
A CPKC spokesperson said “climbing or riding train cars and other equipment is both illegal and extremely dangerous. It can result in serious risk of injury or death. Trains and railway property are private property. Never climb on, over, under, or through rail equipment.”
Day added many of these incidents are, sadly, where people are trying to impress their friends.
“With schools coming back, with frosh weeks happening, we know that Southwestern Ontario has a ton of rails and is a hotspot for incidents,” said Day.
“We are reminding people to do their part to stay safe by staying well back and staying off the tracks. It can be deadly. It can also leave you with life-limiting and life-altering injuries.”
Bogle, who walks the stretch in London daily, sees cars race through the crossing before the arms close, and said people don’t show enough patience.
He describes their actions as “careless, dangerous, and selfish.”
“I’m worried because students are coming back, and especially the first-year students, they tend to look at their students, the ones that are in higher up grades,” said Bogle.
“If they see them doing it, sometimes it’s just for social media, they go ‘Look at this’. It’s very dangerous. When he did jump off, you could tell he’s sort of slipped a bit and that would have been it.”
