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Apparently, Needham Line riders need some sense slapped into them

Gus Coldebella reports a Needham Line conductor felt compelled to make this announcement this morning:

Please don't crawl under the train. It's dangerous. We'll wait for you to walk around.

Ed. note: Unlike other lines, the Needham Line only has one track, at least until Forest Hills.

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Comments

Wow

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Did anyone see this brilliant future Darwin Award winner?

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Being hit by a train (even if you're crawling under it) doesn't qualify you for a Darwin.

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But I suspect that the sort of person who would think "yes, I should crawl under this train, that is a smart and good idea" would be likely to get himself into other, similarly stupid/dangerous situations.

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Please tell me that this announcement was some kind of joke.

That said, I can see how some knucklehead would look at the clearance under one of the older single level carriages and say, "if I don't go under this, I'm going to miss this train, and if I miss this train, I'm going to get fired." In that respect, the conductor's addition of "we'll wait for you" was probably a pretty skilled remark, as that will hopefully make said knucklehead think three times before doing it again (this, of course, presume that s/he knew it was really dangerous, right????).

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I saw a guy who running for a Boston-bound train at Melrose Highlands cross the tracks and open the door and trap from the opposite side of the train. The conductor saw him also, and made him get off the train and wait for the next one.

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Even if a conductor wanted to wait for someone to walk around, how would they know to do it? They're not usually watching for people coming up to the train on the wrong side.

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they had a very strict rule about not holding the train for stragglers, or stopping it once the train started - even if it was only going at turtle speed. At one point, this was actually printed in the schedules.

On numerous ocassions, I'd see people at North Station who were attempting to get on the 5:40 Newburyport train be turned away by the conductor because it was 5:40:30, even if they were still in the process of closing the doors and the train wasn't moving yet.

To their credit, Keolis seems to have somewhat relaxed this 'no tolerance' policy, as I've observed that train crews lately tend to use more latitude and judgement in dealing with stragglers.

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Why didn't they close the doors?

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That wasn't so much an MBCR policy as it was an industry safety standard. Also, schedules are schedules. Rush hour trains have several hundred people on them. Those people do not want to wait for you because you couldn't make it to the station before the published departure time. I've missed the train by seconds myself and it sucks, but I don't expect the train to stop halfway down the platform for me because I know the world does not revolve around me.

As for MBCR vs Keolis, honestly, I've found them to be the same, because it usually comes down to the specific employees, who are the same under Keolis as they were under MBCR. I've had a decent number of them do things like let me in through the cab of a departing outbound train if I get on the platform right at departure time, which is against the rules, but train crews are human and when possible will try and do little things like that.

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...going to be the new "there's another train directly behind us"?

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The Needham line has double track in a few of places to allow trains to pass each other.

One set runs from Forest hills to just short of Roslindale Sq. The second starts behind CM in West Roxbury and out to West Roxbury High School. A third is between Hersey and Needham Junction. The last in Needham is between Rosemary St and West St but that is actually a set of storage tracks for overnight train storage and not used as a passing track, though it could be used for that.

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But never on the Needham Line. I'm less familiar with the Needham stations, but the four Boston stations beyond Forest Hills are set up in a way that would make crawling under the train completely unnecessary. They either have passage under the tracks or no pedestrian access of any kind on the side opposite from the platform. Must have been in Needham.

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Since the parking lot is on the opposite side of the tracks from where you get picked up/dropped off, it's possible to want to crawl under the train then.

Actually now that I'm thinking about it I did see one person creatively go through the train to get to the parking lot, when they could have just walked to the end of the platform or wait the extra 2 minutes for the train to move.

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