A public service announcement from the "this should be astoundingly obvious" department:

If you are lost and need to get out of your vehicle to ask for directions, DO NOT PARK ANY PART OF YOUR VEHICLE ON THE RAILROAD TRACKS.

On this February morning, a driver got lost after coming off the Schuylkill Expressway and stopped at, of all places, the PECO Gas Training and Fire Academy, which is where local fire fighters learn how to deal with gas fires. Pulling off Route 23, he parked his truck and exited with the cab clear but the trailer blocking the tracks. Along comes PGAL, the Philadelphia Greenwich Yard to Allentown train, coming around the curve at West Conshohocken. The engineer had about a quarter of a mile to stop, but even in emergency, his valiant effort came up a little bit short. Specifically, the length of his two locomotives, SD60I CR 5584 and SD50 CR 6725, and one high cube box car IATR 5392. The Hapag Lloyd 20' container was a little dented but stayed connected to the truck cab, the hand rails and pilot on 5584 were slightly mangled and the crossing signals were crushed, but no one was injured and as incidents go, this could have been much worse.

Thank you for your attention. And now back to our regularly scheduled insanity.