In all of the "news" stories I've seen on-line as well on the local TV stations about this wreck, not one word mentioned the train crew, who could easily have been badly injured or killed by the load of steel pipe. I noted that the engineer kept blowing the horn right up to impact.

As a former brakeman from way back when trucks weren't so long and heavy but were dangerous enough to hit, I would have been down on the deck at impact with those pipes...you don't want to be at windshield height when impact occurs. In the only train-heavy truck crash I was in, on an SP GP9, when we hit a loaded sugerbeet truck, a few of those huge beets came right through the glass. We had all jumped to the middle of the cab behind the high nose at impact, so no injuries to us. The idiot truck driver, who ran the railroad stop sign on the rural road in broad daylight, was thrown from the truck cab and was not badly hurt.

But my point is, the so-called reporters these days know nothing about railroads or railroading and apparently don't even think to wonder about the train crews who through no fault of their own are faced with potential tragedy every day at crossings around the country.