"Why Risk Your Life?" -- 1940s Railroad Safety Film

Comments · 403

• DU

  @Dutch_Uncle · 5 years ago

  I worked two summers in a CB&amp;Q car shop. One rule in the yellow book was along the lines of &quot;Use a drift pin, not your fingers, to align metal plates.&quot; &nbsp;I could imagine someone saying, &quot;Not close enough, hit it again&quot; and having a finger guillotined off.&quot;<br><br>One saying was &quot;Every rule is the result of a fool&quot; and another was &quot;The rules are written in blood.&quot;

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• PI

  @pilsudski36 · 12 years ago

  I worked on a railroad. It&apos;s easy to get injured, or worse, when you lose your fear of the right of way and the trains. It happens.<br>

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• DA

  @daveyboy_ · 7 years ago

  Brakeman&apos;s job was alot more dangerous back then

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• DE

  @deadfreightwest5956 · 6 years ago (edited)

  &quot;You, young man, are surely carrying signals for the ambulance!&quot;<br>&quot;It&apos;s all wrong and bad practice!&quot;<br>words to live by

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• RO

  @ronaldscott781 · 8 years ago (edited)

  “The law of gravity needs no courts to enforce it!” (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqpayZ2JqlU&amp;t=835">13:55</a>)

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• JF

  @jf13579 · 4 years ago (edited)

  I love the way the line is delivered about the employees returning from lunch not being in a hurry lol. 80 years ago and some things don’t change :)

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• GE

  @GEORGE-jf2vz · 5 years ago

  Watching these safety films is a lot more entertaining than today&apos;s movies.

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• JU

  @JuanGamer0202 · 1 year ago

  You just gotta love all of the ocasions where the &quot;doing it right crew&quot; also stepped in the rails and the narrator always has to add that &quot;yeah but also dont step into the rail&quot;

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• ED

  @edletain385 · 4 years ago

  What&apos;s interesting is the way many examples of doing things the &apos;safe&apos; way are themselves now banned. Locomotives no longer have footboards, Walkways on the roofs of cars were removed in the late 1960s. They do call out stepping on the railhead sometimes but let it slide at other times. That&apos;s one thing we were constantly cautioned about at CN. Good to see this here my old VHS copy is no longer playable.

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• B3

  @b3j8 · 10 years ago

  Those veteran railroaders had a ball making this film. &nbsp;How often do you get to goof off on the job with the Company&apos;s blessing!

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• ES

  @eshelly4205 · 4 years ago

  In 1994 I worked for ConRail. I worked in transportation as a brakeman/conductor. There are so many ways to die or get maimed. I had several close calls.

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• JU

  @justforever96 · 4 years ago

  15 feet beyond the car, not only so you have warning if it starts to move, but so you also have a safety margin to stop and check and make sure the <i>second</i> track is also clear. that way you have time to stop and look, and even if there IS a train coming AND the car you were walking around starts to move, you have time to go back. Otherwise you either need to jump out of the way of the first car, possibly into the path of a second, or you stop to avoid the second just as the first starts to move. I am not a huge fan of obsessive safety, but I also believe in a healthy respect for danger, and I cannot picture getting complacent around a rail line, or any heavy equipment.

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