Kid driving tractor hits Furx SD40-2 8109 on BNSF track in central Illinois - Trains Magazine

Prayers for the young man, his family, his friends and the train crew.

Farm tractors may have become safer since I drove one in central Illinois when I was 15. This one looks like it at least had overhead protection.

I was working on the ground with a retired farmer on a tractor. I wore a hard hat. He wouldn't. He wore the straw hat he'd worn all his life while working. We were working for the Villiage of Manito and he was driving an old Ford tractor with a front end loader. We were trying to remove an old billboard for a store that had gone out of business by lifting it out of the ground with the loader.

He got it out of the ground just fine, then the entire sign fell on top of him hitting him in the head and knocking him out. Now the tractor had a hand throttle so it just kept going. I rember trying to reach in there from the ground trying to turn off the ignition with him out cold, the tractor moving and the sign on top of us.

He started to come to and I kept saying "Elmer, turn off the tractor" until he did it. He died a few months latter. I was told he never recovered from the head injury.

An acquaintence of mine, who is now a minister in Forest City, IL was driving a farm tractor with another teenager riding on the fender. The rider fell off forward and was run over. The rider died right then and there.

Farm equipment is probably less dangerous than it was 40 years ago, But it's still operated by 15 year old kids.

Again, prayers for all involved.

"By many measures, the U.S. freight rail system is the safest, most efficient and cost effective in the world." - Federal Railroad Administration, October, 2009. I'm just your average, everyday, uncivilized howling "anti-government" critic of mass government expenditures for "High Speed Rail" in the US. And I'm gosh darn proud of that.