Falling asleep on the worst possible place: rails

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A drunk company director was in court today after passing out on a railway track in the afternoon rush hour.

He had consumed a "lethal" amount of vodka and was seen by passengers at 3.30pm crawling along the railway at Epsom.

Astonishing pictures show him asleep and using the rail as a pillow.
Witnesses even said they could hear him snoring from the platform.

Police said he was extraorinarily lucky to have survived.
Oncoming trains had to be diverted at the last minute.

Staff took almost half an hour to wake him and it caused Network Rail almost four hours of subsequent delays, costing £7,296.

The man, a company director from Ashstead, who had "fallen on hard times", was taken to hospital where he later received an on-the-spot fine for being drunk and disorderly.

According to his defending lawyer: "Since this happened he has taken steps to help himself and also arranged to see a counsellor."

Source: (London) Evening Standard, First Edition, 15.12.2006, pages 1 & 7

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Very lucky fella. I recall having read years ago of a less fortunate drunk who passed out one evening pretty much across the centerline of a runway at a major civil airport. Minor damage to the undercarriage of an arriving freight plane, end of story for the drunk.

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mmm...I always took the "falling asleep on the tracks" as a euphemism of committing suicide by letting a train hit you. First though you get so drunk you pass out so you won't chicken out a the last second.

I doubt anyone "accidently" lays themselves across tracks to take a nap, and the odds that they happen to fall over and pass out right across the rails is remote.

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Yeah I tend to agree. A lethal amount of alcohol...and then falling asleep on the tracks?

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When I worked as a counsellor for alcoholics, I've come across at least with three very similar cases ...

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So it is possible?

Wow.

That is scary.

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More than just possible - it and similar have been reported inumerable times throughout recorded history. Drunks have an amazing capacity for doing themselves in through most peculiar, unlikely, sometimes spectacular means.

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I'm not going in details with stories happening during the time of my addiction, but even those which happened when I was in the navy (and "just" drunk a lot) .... normaly, such could only be seen with a ticket, in a circus or variety show.

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About twenty times a month someone ends up on the tracks of NYC's MTA, I don't know about the various other rail lines, the PATH, the LIRR, the Metro-North. Some people are pushed. The phrase "Watch your back." is used interchangably here to mean, 'Excuse me' and 'Look out for the maniac behind you.'

In most cases, there is an escape, the terrified are pulled up or pull themselves up. (I was party to retreiving a baby carriage with baby up from the tracks. We then hauled up the mom. All were okay. She turned her back for a moment to tend to another child and the carriage rollled away. She jumped in after) But the worst cases are those which include the drunk or high. They fall into the slot usually headfirst and are unconscioness. Any Samaritan must jump into the trackspace with his own life in clear jepordy to try to rescue a stranger. On two occassions the drunk tried to fight off his rescuers thinking he was being mugged.

Joe(stand by and stand back)Nation

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Quote:

Staff took almost half an hour to wake him and it caused Network Rail almost four hours of subsequent delays, costing £7,296.

I wonder if it occurred to any of them to pick the guy up. I can see them all desperately trying to wake the guy up by gently shaking his shoulders, then more urgently and with more force as someone shouts, "TRAIN COMIN!!"

Four hours and fourteen trains later, one of the staff, the smartest one, rubs his chin thoughtfully and says, "Why don't the 10 of us pick him up and carry him over to that nice grassy spot and then continue to try to wake him? Then we won't have to worry about diverting these damn trains."

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After attending my best friend's stag night back in the 70's, I awoke to find a large brown dog licking my testicles.

I had no idea where I was, or who the dog belonged to, but it certainly woke me up with a start.

My trousers were next to me on the floor and I never did find my underpants.

Upon dressing myself and making my way to the door, I came upon the sight of the groom to be, trousers round his ankles, sat on a large plant pot which was situated on an upstairs landing of a very posh house.

I woke him up, and after he had stood and dressed, we looked down to see that he had deposited a number two in amongst the roots of a small palm tree.

We snuck out quietly, and spent a good long while trying to find a road sign to give us some indication as to where we were.

We saw a red double decker bus with "Marble Arch" signed on the front, so we jumped on while it stood at traffic lights as we recognised the destination.

Two days later, I was his best man and, to this day, his wife has no knowledge of what happened on that night.

Neither do we, really.

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I was once in the company of a bunch of drunks (of whom i was one, but there were only two of us who were "holding it" well at all), and one of them passed out on some railroad tracks. His "buddies" thought that was a real bad idea, to they pulled him off, and laid him on the grade--head down. He then threw up. I grabbed my buddy, and we hurried over, picked him up, and began slapping his back, so that he'd cough it out. I saw an old GI die of "aspiration pneumonia" (drowning) when he'd thrown up while drunk while i was in the Medical Corps.

I later, and in rather short order, lived to regret having saved that bastard's life.

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Lord Ellpus wrote:

After attending my best friend's stag night back in the 70's, I awoke to find a large brown dog licking my testicles.

All these years later and nothing has really changed.

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I found an decomposing body in the middle of nowhere alongside a train track one time. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a woman in her fifties and her purse was still wrapped around her arm.

I had to fight back the smell as I rummaged through the purse but was rewarded with seventeen dollars in bills and some loose change.

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gustavratzenhofer wrote:

Lord Ellpus wrote:
After attending my best friend's stag night back in the 70's, I awoke to find a large brown dog licking my testicles.

All these years later and nothing has really changed.

Apart from the rash, of course.

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Lord Ellpus wrote:

After attending my best friend's stag night back in the 70's, I awoke to find a large brown dog licking my testicles.

I had no idea where I was, or who the dog belonged to, but it certainly woke me up with a start.

My trousers were next to me on the floor and I never did find my underpants.

Upon dressing myself and making my way to the door, I came upon the sight of the groom to be, trousers round his ankles, sat on a large plant pot which was situated on an upstairs landing of a very posh house.

I woke him up, and after he had stood and dressed, we looked down to see that he had deposited a number two in amongst the roots of a small palm tree.

We snuck out quietly, and spent a good long while trying to find a road sign to give us some indication as to where we were.

We saw a red double decker bus with "Marble Arch" signed on the front, so we jumped on while it stood at traffic lights as we recognised the destination.

Two days later, I was his best man and, to this day, his wife has no knowledge of what happened on that night.

Neither do we, really.

You got drunk on vodka and soymilk, didn't you?

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Falling asleep on the worst possible place: rails

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