Thinking Sideways: Sunset Limited Derailment

I'll be back to Thinking sideways. Okay. I am Steve, as always joined by Devin and Joe, and today we have yet another mystery to talk about. I'm really agreely mystery. Ye does it involve my favorite thing? One of them? One of my favorite things? One of them? I do have a lot of favorite things that you do. Yeah. Today we're going to talk about the Sunset Limited derailment that happened in and not correct. Actually it did go off its rails. Well yeah, but it didn't. It didn't

like different reasons anyway. Anyway, you guys done. Yeah, before we get off track again or get in too far into the story, Yeah, I do want to say that this was a listener suggestion from Katie, so thank you Katie. Really like this, um, so let's go ahead and do this.

The the Sunset Limited, which is an Amtrak passenger train, derailed in the middle of the Arizona Desert, which, by the way, I'm kind of working on a travel disaster series, it appears, and I'm really just trying to scare the crap out of people so that they have a reason to stay home because traveling is scary. You do last time the airline crash the South African Airlines. Actually, yeah, I was researching this. I found a list online of all these various train crashes. It's like, you know, the

nineteenth century out to the present day. Some really amazing. The problem with discouraging our listeners from traveling is that many of them listen while traveling. So our listeners, our listenership may decrease a little bit. Okay, fine, as I always do, at the end of this, I'll give your reassurances why it can't happen anymore, why you're safe. It'll be okay, all right, it'll be okay, good because I just got back from a train trip. So alrighty well,

let's let's start our mystery. The name Sunset Limited is actually quite an old name it was used before the turn of the twentieth century. Actually, at that time or for a short time, Southern Pacific Railroad was running it under the name of Sunset Express. So the whole thing originally was if you just caught That was run by Southern Pacific Railroad, which was a huge rail line that ran all over the United States. They were huge and beautiful,

and some of their trains were beautiful trains. A lot, I'm sorry. The Sunset Limited was a passenger train, and it was kind of a premier luxury train. It had bar cars, it had sleeping cars, and it had just about every other car that was needed to make it's kind of well to do clientele happy. Sounds like, actually, yeah, it really was. Now today the Sunset Limited runs from New Orleans to San Francisco because it takes a bend at Los Angeles and heads north. But prior to that

it used to run from I believe it was Orlando. Yeah, it doesn't do that anymore because after Hurricane Katrina the tracks are sort of no good. I don't think I don't think it goes to San Francisco anymore, either, doesn't. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that that's all on the I was pulling up the root information and I'm almost positive that it's still going there. That's kind of where it does it's big turn. Well, yeah it doesn't. You can always

catch a plane in l a um. Now, the Sunset Limited was great, It was fantastic, and it just kept

getting bigger and bigger. But of course the American rail system started to go into decline and it couldn't escape that general decline, so it started to go downhill and at its lowest point, this is actually where it's probably one of the saddest things about this train is at its lowest point, the Sunset Limited was one engine, a baggage car, a coach car, and an automat car, which, by the way, an automatic is just a bunch of vending mission foods and tables, right, I mean, yeah, you

could sit down, but yeah. And the reason that it had to have the automat is because the trip is so long that it took you had to give people food. Otherwise the automat would have never been there. They would have saved the weight in the space if they could have. Could you buy a beer out of machine too? I don't know, probably not, probably not. It would have been really foamy. Yeah maybe, although it was like the fifties and sixties, right, so who knows. Yeah, yeah, pull the

Martini lever. They had whiskey vending machines. I mean, I think they were mostly novelty, but that was a thing I like the idea. Yeah, me too, Okay, okay, So it's uh so, like I said, Sunset Limited starts at the in the early end of the twentieth century. Now we're going to move to The rail system is in decline in general in the United States. Passenger rail I mean, I think passenger rails still doing all right. It is still doing all right. It's not it's not what it

was at one time, but it's still doing well. It's alive. That year one is when Amtrak took over the rail lines for passenger trains. For those of you who don't know, Amtrak is the name that is used for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, which is a US government funded company. It's not technically completely private, subsidized, I think is the right way to say it, and it's a it's a government sponsored consolidation of most of the passenger rails in

the US. And if you actually look at the name Amtrack American Tracks literally where they got the name. Get it, I got it. The Sunset Limited, of course, is a passenger train under Amtrack. So Amtrak does their due diligence, and as with most of the lines that they run, they managed to grow it and it's gotten bigger, and yeah, I mean there's something to be said. I think that kind of luxury passenger trains ended up being really really

expensive and not really worth the time. That's the that's was just like for that amount, I can take a three hour flight and the nostalgia of it wasn't there yet where it is now so amtrack or even a drive, yeah, I mean from here we're in Portland to go to Seattle, I think it's a five or six hour train ride. Three and a half hours? Is it to get from Portland to Seattle? Does it take so long because you stop everywhere and you can drive. You can drive in

the same amount of time. Yeah, And it's equaling costs to a rental car because that family will fly into Seattle and then drive down in rental all the time. Like, where does you take the train? Oh, never mind, it's actually more expensive. We just went up to Seattle. On the train a weekend ago, and there it's long and expensive, but there's some nostalgia with it right now, but there it wasn't. So when Amtrak took over, they lowered the rates and kind of made it more of an economy thing,

and people really back on that. So that's that's kind of when it's affordable, why not I can sit here and relax and do what I want today. The line that the Sunset Limited runs is it's a route that it runs three times a week east to west and west to east, so three times a week in one direction and then three times a week in the other direction. And it runs the course over two days is approximately two thousand miles, which for folks on the metric system,

that's and in the train had grown again. It was big enough that it required two engines and it had about a dozen cars. So we're gonna move to the day in question. Well, that's where we're headed. The day in question that we're going to talk about is the wee hours of the morning of October nine. The train is at this point heading westbound, so from New Orleans, heading towards San Francisco. The train derailed just before crossing a trestle, And if you don't know, trestle is a

bridge for a rail. They're smaller. Yes. Even though so the train is derailed, it's got enough inertia behind it. And this is the thing about train crashes that make them so sometimes seriously deadly. It had so much inertia behind it that the engines, even though they were knocked off of the rail, traveled across the bridge, and the next two cars went across the trestle, and then after that the rest of the cars actually fell off of the bridge. The passengers reported feeling a giant jolt like

you would and then the world started spinning. No pun intended. So the train, like I said, we get the engines come off, the first two cars come off, as the next cars start fall over, the whole thing jack knives. And the way trains are connected now in the nineties, that's what I do. When I say now, I mean

in the nineties. And all of the cars are connected, and the connections are snug enough that they can't roll too much independent of one another, so they're all locked together, kind of like the links in a chain, so as you spin it, all of them roll. And that's one of the things that actually kept us from being a much more deadly incident is that it pulled all of them over and it absorbed some of the force of

the crash because it fall down into the ravine. One car couldn't just you know, topple over and over and over in just the whole thing kind of doing one slow roll wasn't. Yeah. I was reading about that then earlier train wreck and the description of one of these guys that was I think he was in the bar car or something, and he said, you know, you put dice in the cup and you shake the cup, and he pumped the dice. He said he felt like he felt like that. Yeah, I felt like it was a yeah. Yeah.

If if anybody has played with model trains, I played with model trains all the time as a kid. You know exactly what's going on here is that, you know model trains, it's hard to get them to go with enough speed. So when you knock one off, the next couple kind of fall over, but they don't just go tumbly. Now imagine that they were going ten times as fast and the cars were flying everywhere. That's what old trains

used to have happened. But like I said, the train cars because they're stuck together, prevents a lot of human loss of life. They kind of just toppled. Yeah, one person died, the man by the name of Mitchell Bates. He was an Amtrak employee. He's been but amtrack for like twenty plus years, and he was on the train as an employee. Correct he was he was working, so one assumes he was standing and he was probably walking around at one thirty in the morning doing his rounds.

He could have even been in between cars or something something, But he was the only person that was killed when the train fell off the trustle. And by the way, just to give you a frame of reference, it fell thirty feet, which is equivalent to about nine meters, so it's a long way down. Although it's how wide was it? Do you remember? It wasn't wider than the car was long right the ravine it was it was, it was

longer it was the ravine. The with the ravine was more than the length of a car, but it was like two cars at the most. Wasn't some giant Grand Canyon size pit, that's what it was, just a dry, dry river bed. You should just look up pictures. There's lots of pictures. There's gonna be it's gonna helps in a lot of places to do that. But so Mitchell Bach is killed. A lot of people are injured, but not nearly as many as could have been. About but a quarter of the people that are on board are injured.

So we have seventy eight injured out of two forty eight passengers, plus an additional twenty crew. So that's a you know, a quarter people. That's pretty bad. But that's all range of injury, right, it's not that's anything from us. You know, spring ankle, brained ankle to contusion, yes, yes, yeah, so that I mean, you know, it could have been some of them. I heard some of them, like about seventeen or twenty were very seriously. I'm surest of them

were minor engines. But the derailment happened, like I said, it was at one thirty am. It happened about fifty miles west of Phoenix, Arizona, and obviously, of course emergency crews scramble to get out to the site as fast as they can. Now you might think, okay, well, it's a train, it's going over a bridge, it's going fast in the middle of nowhere. So it was probably just some kind of natural accident, but you would be completely wrong to think that, because, as it turns out, it

was completely and totally intention all sabotage. Yeah, which is kind of a bumber. Yeah, And we're gonna we're gonna give some of the details on that shortly, but I just want to keep going on about in the timeline of what happened for the folks in the train. So the crew goes along the train and says, hey, everybody, stay in the train. That's smart, it's smart. It's the desert, it's night. You don't want to go trains and around

in the middle of nowhere. You're gonna be lost. And the rattlesnakes, there's scorpions, you know, exactly, lots of bad animals. But eventually people did start getting out of the train because the A C is not working, the plumbing is not working, so it's a little stinky in the cars. And as they started walking around outside the train, uh, they started finding printed flyers on the ground, and those flyers were held down by rocks, which very quickly led

everybody to realize they were intentionally placed there. Somebody knew that the train was gonna crash beforehand. Yeah, that'd be kind of creepy. Oh wow, would freak me the hell out. Realize there's cross hairs in the back of your head, probably right exactly. So there's a total of four notes you're found. They're all identical. I haven't found a verifiable copy of it around to know exactly what it said. We Devin, you found. I found a copy and it

was it was two different texts. One was like a much longer version of the second one and the one. I can't verify either of them, but one of them was reported to have been put It was in a newspaper afterwards. That was you know, they printed they said this is what the letter said basically or something like that. Um, and so, yeah, I can't verify that they existed or not, but it was. It's good. It's good reading either way it is. It's interesting if if the long one is accurate.

It is a long, meandering ram will about the new world order, like you would kind of expect from somebody who might do something like yes, and it talks about it's it's written from the sons of the Gestapo. Excuse me, thank you. Uh So, I don't know if it's right, But and this stuff is in the copy that we found.

There's but and then when you read the reporting on the Sunset Limited, it always talks about how the note addresses things that were done or is addressed to, I should say, the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the A T F, the Federal Bureau of Investigation f b I, the state Police, and the Sheriff's office, and the notes all the I guess I can just call it then

note since they're identical. The note mentions incidents that those agencies were all involved in, one of which is the Waco, Texas standoff, which was with David Koresh and the Branch of Indians in as well as what happened with at Ruby Ridge with Randy Weaver and his family in. And

then it's that's where it signed Sons of Gestapo. Yeah, I mean this letter has again I can't verify that this is what it is, but the text that I found has things like the nWo New World Order right needs to bring about chaos in America so that it can pose martial law, which will be enforced by the United Nation troops. The bombing in Oklahoma City was the

first step in creating this chaos. Many crucial records from Waco and Ruby Ridge were destroyed in the bombing, but also destroyed where the records from the Germans who were brought to this country after World War Two. Their first home in America was Oklahoma. It's that letters, and I'm inclined to believe that the letters likely were that kind

of letter. Yes, but the lage and the theme, it's kind of anti government kind of stuff, but very world order where that writer, so, I think sense of humor is comes through this group supposedly as Sons of Gestapo. So he's anti government, and I think he wants to name himself after a very large, very effective government agency. I think he's tweaking us that that's going to come

up in our very section. Yet you're absolutely right. Um, Now here's a problem with the Sons of Gestapo other than the fact that they write an unintelligible pamphlet, is that I've never heard of him, nobody had, nobody did before that, and nobody has heard of them since. And it it almost seems as if it's, uh, it's meant to redirect the attention away from the people who might who are responsible. Yeah, very likely actually, uh, now, that's

kind of weird and sinister on its own. But even more sinister about the derailment and the sabotage is that whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing, because as they bypassed all bunch of safety stuff. It does seem like there should be some kind of safety measures there are for trains, like, hey, guess what that got derails And we're going to talk about the safety systems, and we'll actually talk about the derailment and how it was done in depth. It's very It's something that you

basically can't do anymore, so, which is good. None of you group balls who were listening to go out and try and do this. Please you're not gonna be able to. But also don't be nervous about it happening. You can keep taking railway railways well, actually many places around the world they're probably still doing it the old fashioned way. So there's probably places where you can still do this. Yeah, maybe, hopefully I think that they're there are fewer and fewer

every day. So we're gonna talk about the crash, but I first want to describe, just for folks who don't know, the anatomy of a rail line. I can't imagine anybody who doesn't know, but it is important, it's very let's talk about it anyway. Okay, So the anatomy of a railroad, by the way, a rail and road set of rails on a road. That's literally what the name means. It is made up of a series of large wooden beams, which called railroad ties, and they sit on a bed

of gravel and that's literally called your track bed. And it has sections of steel rails that are laid across it. And those rails are attached to the wooden beams. They're tie plates, steel tie plates, or those are attached with giant spikes. Yeah, this is really the basics of it.

Railroad tracks come in two sizes, which isn't really important in their length for us, but they do come in a multitude of sizes, which is actually I kind of got into the science, haven't It's really kind of interesting as to for when and how they're they aligned. But we're not going to go down that path. I have read something very interesting about railroads and why they are what is it five or four point eight five inches across the physical rail. Yeah, it's very interesting. There's a

lot of really interesting. Basically, it comes, it goes, it comes back to ancient Greece and all that stuff interesting. So you're going to have individual sections of rails, and those rails are going to be attached to one another using a steel plate and big old bolts. Those plates are called fish plates, right, and those are they're under right, the rails, they're right, that's sorry, they're under the like the part that the wheel attaches to. So the easy way,

I'm not going to use the technical terms. So if you are a rail fanatic, I apologize. I'm just trying to keep this as simple as possible. A rail is I shaped, It's like a capital yes, And so what Joe is saying is yes, it is in the middle on the upright that they are bolted together in the race. The train wheels run on the top of the eye and the bottom of the eye sits on the When I said under, I meant under the overhang. I knew exactly what you meant. That's why I wanted to clarify.

I think the ibeam is the simplest way to put it. Yes, perfect now described a train track the track, yes, just the track. Of course, we don't want our two pieces of rail coming apart, so they're bolted together. But as we talked about, trains move really fast and they have a lot of inertia, and if for some reason they come apart of conductor is not going to be able to easily stop the train if they even see it.

Do you mean the engineer is it an engineer? I always I heard it call the conductor the engineers the guy that drives the train, right, and then the conductor is a guy that who who takes your ticket and and all that stuff. Google says engineers operate the train. Conductors don't they do procedural stuff. See this is why I shouldn't rely on my childhood knowledge of trains. The

tank engine was lying to you, freaking Thomas. Okay, but anyway, the point is is that you don't want these these things driving the train, whoever the guy driving the train, the person driving the train to not see that because they're not gonna be able to stop it in time. So what is done is that a small electric charges run through the rails and that is connected to a signal.

Is it through the rails or through a wire on the rails, So the rails the way I understand it, and I may be incorrect, but the way I understand it is run through the rail because two pieces of rail don't always perfectly attached to one another because of

the fish play expansion contraction. I mean, even though the train wheel doesn't know that, they use a wire to connect the two and if the current between from the rails from one or the other is broken, then that flips a SWITCHTCE safe distance away, they say, hey, there's a problem. They can stop the train and then send

somebody out to investigate it. Okay, that's that's the safety system. Okay. Now, so I was just gonna say, so, as long as the rails are actually touching still, the wire doesn't It doesn't matter, right, But the wire is a backup because if let's say it's really cold and the steel contracts and they've separated enough, the wire is a backup for correct or potentially you get corrosion between the fish plate and the rail. Yeah, that also happens. Yeah, exactly. I

just wanted to make sure that I was understanding. Yes, you're absolutely correct, And my understanding of the wire is that it's it's over long. They do it in coils. I did, uh at least used to have. Yeah, I think they used to have a loop. It's not a couple of loops. So I tried to check this out a couple of days ago. Please please explain. Yeah, well, there's some railroad tracks not far from my house, you know. Yeah, So I went over there and I started. I wanted

to see this. I wanted to see this wire, to see exactly what it looked like, because I remember seeing fish plates on rails when I was a kid. Yeah, And so I went back to look, like to see if that wire I was there. So I started walking, and I walk, and I walk and I walk, and I must have walked like, you know, almost two yards. I'm going, my god, they make these rails really long

these days. They actually do, especially with you know, through cities, they lay the longer ones as much as they can, just because it's I don't know if you've noticed this or not. I don't know how long it's been since you were on a train, But you can't feel when you go over the thing, and the slower you go, the more you feel it right and goes. So you wouldn't want that as much through residential areas. Here's a great thing about what Joe did. Joe gets out his

phone to call a friend to ask about that. They have a friend named Tim who's more conversant with railroads than me and him and say, Tim, do they weld them together? Now? And I get a phone call and I answered hello, Hey, what's up. He's like, hey, Tim, And I realized this call the prone number, but I don't. I don't say anything, what's going on? And that's what I pulled my phone away from my face and look at it and says, oh, Steve, okay, okay, acsilutely, you

didn't call me. I just like. The point is is that most rails, as Joe has discovered today or well did together all, they don't use fish plates. What at first I was, I was like, you could go you could probably go down to the rail Heritage Museum that's also not too from that. Um, they probably have all examples of all that stuff out there. Oh yeah, I'm sure there's tracks around that have that, just unfortunately these particular ones didn't have that pretty frequently. Yeah, so they're

well did now. They don't have the wire, they don't need the wire. They don't need the wire because the weld makes the connection and it's actually stronger and it's a smoother ride as you were talking about. That's part of the reason they may not actually be using the longer ones anymore. But because they welded a continuous surface, you never know. You can tell you on Amtrak from Portland to Seattle they are still using those connectors. Clack, Yeah,

let's let's get back to the story. This is actually important. Though it is important, I just don't want to go too far down down that path. Okay, So whoever sabotage the Sunset Limited pulled twenty nine of the spikes that were holding the rail and the tie plates to the railroad ties uh from a single junction between two rails, and then they then shifted one of those rails inward so that the two were no longer lined up, but they moved it inward, and then they re spiked it down.

And the really kind of hard part is that they knew enough to make sure not to break that wire. But what that meant is that as the train was coming down the line where that junction was, that wheel hit a flat, blunt surface. They moved it in far enough so that the flat edge was now to the inside. What used to be the outside was now made it up to the inside of its previous Mate, I thought

you're a description that you did. I actually did that when I was reading through the script earlier, even though I had seen I've seen the diagrams that I thought that was a really good description. Listeners, Yeah, we'll give that to folks here. I just want people to understand those that here's the thing. It hit with such force because it's a flat, blunt edge it I kid you not popped the train wheels right off the track, just on that one side, on that one side, which is

then causes the whole derailment. And any time that this happens, you can actually see a big old ding in the wheels of the train. So it's a lot of force. So let's go back to the analogy that or the description that I had while you say, okay, I actually have a feeling there's gonna be all kinds of people doing this if you're driving. Please don't careful, don't do this while you're driving. Just imagine it. No, actually, here,

it's an easier way to describe it. Take two cards of cigarettes, put them and then lucky strikes and then okay, So here's how you do it. Okay, So you're gonna take the tip of your left thumb and you're gonna put it against the tip of your right thumb. And then you're gonna take the tip of your left pointer finger and you're gonna put it against the tip of your right pointer and they're gonna be parallel. And those your pointer fingers and your thumbs, those make the rail

and where they meet that's the rail junction. Showing it around like she's a hand model. Now the train is gonna be coming down your right arm and it would go across that junction and then go back up your left arm. The train is going to be coming down your right arm, across the junction of your fingers, and then back up your left arms. Train going I stopped, Joe.

Now you're gonna be a saboteur. As a saboteur, what you're gonna do is you're gonna take your left pointer finger and you're gonna move it inwards so that your fingernail of your left pointer fingers touching the pad of your right finger the inside. You see how that shifted off. Now you understand as that rail because the wheels sit inside the rails as it comes from down, it's going to hit that flat edge. Shouldn't it be the thumb that moves in. It doesn't matter which one, So wait

to clarify, it's not wheel the whole wheel. They just have the lip on the inside, right, because because the wheel of trades rides the top and the inside of the rail. But it doesn't matter, Joe, which which finger you move you go fall? All right? Fine, So this is how our saboteurs did the deed basically. Now, whoever did this had to work fairly quickly in a general sense, because trains would be coming down that line every six

to twelve hours after the last one it passed by. Sorry, should we mention that, as we described before, just to reiterate, the medal is still touching, so the current isn't interrupted. The medal isn't touching, the wire is still in place. The wire that connects the rails was stretched. Now I've heard that it was a long enough loop that they didn't have to do anything. I've also heard that they used what was called a jumper line to add kind of like a jumper cable, to add extra link to it,

but that they did it. They knew that the line would be would be interrupted. If they interrupted the signal, the whole thing was going to the game was up. Sorry, they totally wanted to reiterate that, Yes, but they also knew. I mean, they had to do it fast because trains are coming down this line every six to twelve hours, because it's a heavily used track. They would have had yeah,

of course, but that's not hard to find out. No, the schedules are totally published, but they would have had to at least staked out that spot for a while to know when the trains came by. And I guess the other thing to mention is that in these areas there are some areas that aren't this much. But I believe in these areas you have one track line for all train traffic, so amtrack shares the line with freight line. Freight line traffic and freight lines aren't nearly as publicized

as to when they're coming down the trains. So you can, you can if you sit there and stake it out and say, okay, the train comes by every Thursday at this time. You can, but that's not something that you necessarily as a matter of public record, right, And the other thing to keep in mind is that the amtrack runs on track that is owned by multiple rail companies, So this happens to be owned by Southern Pacific the

spot that we're talking about. But yes, that's a good point, so it could have been they would have had to actually sit Yeah, they would have stake it out and keep keep track of it. I mean that that really means that somebody had to sit around and do their homework and really plan this at least probably months, a good amount of time. So they probably didn't live too far away, I would I would guess that they couldn't have lived too far away. Now, the FBI, they have

been working on this case for twenty years. They so far have no viable suspects. I've heard mentioned that they thought they had a suspect or too, but really it turns out they didn't ever really have anybody in mind. There were a couple of locals who showed up and grabbed them, didn't they Some folks they kind of made themselves, you know, a bad name, because they kind of wrangled some people up and then turned out they totally had

no idea what they were doing. But really, they they've had no suspects, but then they decided that, well, somebody who did this must have had experience with trains. They must work. They've got to have experience to know how this has happened. But then it was discovered that this was not the first time that a train had derailed in this very specific way, and that's when the story kind of took a turn. There is another train called the City of San Francisco which derailed the really close,

really close in terms of the method. I'm sorry, I was just being a jerk about the location in the name and the year totally close. Actually it really the year is what makes it so interesting. So I'm going to talk about this a little bit. But what makes the year so interesting is that it's far enough back. It's says fifty years. It's not something that I would have known as a young man and then been able to go out and make this kind of thing happen again.

It's a long enough span of time that from the collective memory for most folks, it didn't happen. So that's that's why I find it interest thing. So let's talk about the City of San Francisco for a minute. It's the train. It's interesting yeah, it's a cool train. By the way it was, it was, it was a really cool train. We're gonna go back in time. We're gonna go to nine nine, specifically August twelve. The city of San Francisco is heading westbound train correct, not the entire city,

just the train. The train has a hundred forty nine passengers and a total of fourteen cars. It's about ten thirty at night, and it is approaching a bridge over

the Humboldt River, which is in Nevada. Sometime earlier in the day, we don't know when, somebody had removed the fish plates the joint bars from the rails and had moved the rail line in much like I had described, but they had done it part way into a trestle, into a bridge that went over a river bed right before a curve, right before a curve as well, which is what happened with our train wreck as well. The Sunset Limited. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, it was,

it was also Southern Pacific Trail the line. Yeah, it was also a Southern Pacific line. That's absolutely correct and absolutely actually is just pretty much an exact duplicate of this. Really, it's very close. There are some things that I don't always think are exact. So let's let's do some of this. So they private the rails over whoever moved those lines wasn't sure that the engineer wouldn't see what was happening. So what they did is they painted the end of

the rail that they had moved. Because it was nighttime, the light would catch reflect off the metal they painted. I think they painted in a dark green. And then they stuck a tumbleweed on top of that junction to hide what they had done. Uh. Trains going sixty, which for our friends on the metric system is to an hour. The first two cars, again just like the Sunset Limited, managed to cross the bridge even though they have been

knocked off of the rail and flew across. Flew across would be a good way to do it, uh, And they came to a stop just over eight hundred feet away. That that is not a good thing though, because the engine and the first two cars they go over it and they stay in line and they keep traveling. The next car, the third car, is knocked off enough that it's twists and it actually hits the bridge that it

is riding across. The bridge is destroyed, essentially at this point because train cars are piling into it and tumbling all over the place. And I think it was that first car where most of the casualties took place. Right. I believe the first car, because that car was buried the first time it went down. This is not like this limited where they're all tied together really well before that, they're not articulated together. They came apart and the first

car was underneath three others. It was the bar car. It was the one that went down the lounge. People weren't exactly strapped into their seats or anything. Yeah, and so it uh, it's it was a giant mass of wreckage. If you look at the photos, if you look up the image, it's a giant mess. It really does look like a kid just took train toys and stuck them into sand and they're just sticking caddy wampus. That's what

it looks like. Um, that's a train wreck. I didn't actually see the wreck, but I saw right right after it was just laying. They're all twisted. It was a freight train all twisted and smoking and everything like that. And wow, it's amazing a lot of energy there because I mean these these cars were all twisted up, and they don't build those things, you know, they don't build

them a weak build out of you know, spitting Elmer's clue. Actually, interestingly that the rail Heritage Museum that I was talking about, they have cars that I don't know if they are actually from the city of San Francisco or not, but they're the same color scheme of the same type of Pacific There are a lot same same with the Sunset Limited, but they have a bunch of those cars. So if you ever want, if you're ever in Portland and you want to see cars that act like that, I would

bet those are the Great Northwestern Line probably. I say Great Northwestern Line because out where I live. About six or seven years ago, I went trooping around and was taking pictures of old passenger cars that had gone through a fire and there it's really amazing. It was really, really interesting. It was totally trespassing, I admit it, but I got in there and took a bunch of photos because it was just so cool. But I have a feeling if those cars were stored here, it wouldn't be

surprised if others. But then again, the city of San Francisco cars were also stored here for a while, a lot of them. So it's in the Brooklyn Yards. Yeah, um that I mean, if I'm sure that everybody he lives near some place where there's old train cars because they were built roll sturdy, not like Amtrak ones dictated the fate of those old cars they left outside. Well, that's not so good. Turns out Brooklyn Yard was really good for those. Yeah, there's a lot of well we

live in a very wet area to cover that stuff. Okay, so let's let's get back to the city of San Francisco. Though. I just people were killed, which is surprisingly few for the amount of but looking at those pictures though, like you would expect. But I'm talking about to kill the deaths, Yeah, I guess that's no injury numbers in this that's just but that's a lot. That's a huge, a lot of people. And you know, at the time, it was a lot

of theories were floated. It was they were saying that the rail line was mismanaged by Southern Pacific or that they were covering something up. But it quickly became apparent that somebody had sabotegy. It was that was before they had actually and actually inspected the lines. Right once they looked at the actual rail they were like, oh, just kidding, that is bad. So the rail lines were really um.

They were drunk on their own power, I'll say at the time, and they we don't have to tell you anything. We're doing what we're doing. So of course people started talking, and then days later they started publicizing what they had. I think that quashed a lot of the rumors and the conspiracies that were out there. The theories. We can't

do away with all of them. Yeah, there was one theory that they got out there just immediately and got on the train and actually actually did the sabotage to make it look like an accident, which it really would be hellaciously hard. It's actually impossible to climb under train and move the rail, and sitting on now turns out yeah crazy. So besides having been done essentially the same way, there's another thing that links the City of San Francisco

derailment to the Sunset Limited derailment. Yeah, and that is a article that came out. I would say that it I would say that it is the reason that the Sunset Limited derailment happened the way it did. I will disagree with that, but give me a minute. Okay. So here's what we're bringing up is that in October of article came out in a magazine called sp train Line talking about how the sabotage was done. It was written

by a guy named John Signer. He wrote an article, and of course, the the the FBI immediately show up at his doorstep when they figured it figured out it was out there, they started interrogating and questioning him about this. Uh. He of course sang like a canary and gave him whatever information they wanted to. I don't blame him if you're like, oh, yeah, I mean, how did the FBI

find out about this? I don't know how they found out about it, to be quite honest, that has never been specified how they figured it out, but they wanted kind of I'm kind of wondering if John Signer actually when he heard about it and he had just written that article, I'm kind of thinking he might have contacted them. Well he might have because his article came out before the derailment, right before the derailment. Yeah, but it could

be that he called him. I don't know, But what they wanted to know is the details of it where he got his details and oh, by the way, who gets this magazine? They really wanted to know and it wasn't. It was a fairly small publication. It's a teeny publication. So here's the deal. I tried to contact him. I wanted to talk to him about what was going on. He never replied to any of our our attempts. So then, yeah,

which is fine. I totally then turned around and picked up I was able to get a back issue of this particular magazine for anybody who wants to know. It's issue number forty five, which is the fall issue. And it's really interesting. I know. I gave it to Joe after I'd read it. There's a lot of really cool information about the cars that to me, you said, Joe could have it first. You know, you could have it next. But there's a lot of cool information about the cars

that are in the city of San Francisco line. One of the things I love about it is how every every car gets its own name and that and there were too to do great ones Twin Peaks and Chinatown because Twin Peaks is one of my favorite TV shows way back when. N is one of the best. Yeah, great movie. If you haven't seen it, you must see it. It actually holds up. I watched it six months ago. It totally holds up. But so, yeah, this came out really, I mean probably like nine or ten days before. No,

it's more like a month or so. What was the October would come out in October or September. So that's the thing is that it doesn't have a date on it says it's the fall issue, and on their website they have a month listed. But it had to have come out ahead of time. And you know magazines do that. You subscribe in September October, Yeah, you get them early. But it was a quarterly magazine as well. All it

came out every three months. But I read the article, and the article is really light on details of how this happened. I figured out a lot more by finding drawings and articles that were written by people who were analyzing the crash. Is enough though, I mean really, if you read that, if you knew about trains, it would

be enough to tell you how to do it. If you didn't know about trains, it would be just enough to get your run over by a train, I think, because you'd be screwed around on the tracks and the train would run you all. And I guess one could could also argue that if you know about trains, you probably know how to do something like this. Anyway, Yeah,

it's not such a hard thing to do. And here's the thing is that the majority of the information that describes what was done in his article, it is quotes from the then in this is in President of Southern Pacific, a guy by the name of Angus McDonald, and he was talking about it the Rex six days after it happened, So it's quotes from him, which I feel like if it's in this those quotes were everywhere, so it would have been in a ba jillion locations that people could

have pulled that content from. Although not so I mean, yeah, yes, on the one hand, yes, but you know, from nineteen nine, it's not as convenient as saying, hey, this thing hits someone's mailbox, but conveniently close number of But if you're a trained enthusiast, you work on the line, or you really like trains, you know your history. I mean, I was on some of the forums and the things that people were rattling off was just like the sheer amount

of information. It's it's kind of like guys who know the stats for the Super Bowls or baseball games. I'm just I'm just arguing that it's like an OCAM's razor sort of thing. Is just amazingly it's a huge coincidence that these things happened so close together. So while it's you know, while it's really easy to say, well, anybody could have found that information, that's true, yes, but it is super convenient that the information was in someone's mailbox

within a month of having this happen again. Yeah, and even though it was even though it was kind of light on the details, I mean, there were enough. There's enough in there, and there were photographs and stuff too that showed pretty get in probably enough to have just like to spark the idea. Right, if you know about trains, I don't know that you necessarily think, I know, I will derail a train by doing this thing that I

know how to do. But if you read a thing about it and you go, oh, yeah, that's how I can sabotage the train. That's how I can that's into it. Yeah, I'm not in disacreem, and I just I feel like the magazine may not have been as uh Prime. Yeah, well no, it's just the magazine gives it gives you, gives you the idea. You're a guy who works for the railroad. Let's say, and so you think, oh, I better know how they did that. They just moved the rail over a couple of inches in Waha. Yeah. Well

let's uh. I think we've we've talked about what happened enough. I think we need to get into theories. It's about time time. It's way past my bedtime, Okay. Our first suspect is slash. Theory is sons of Gesta. Yes, let's have the shadowy organization. Yeah, Joe, uh so if anybody does, I'm gonna need your help here in a second show. Anybody who doesn't know you may recognize the name Gestapo. Joe, You're gonna have to pronounce what that that stands for

because it's an abbreviation, and I cannot. My German is a little rusty. But I would say, is uh guy him less? Start pull it? Si okay better than me? I I just pronounced that. Which But the Gestapo were the secret state police in Germany for the Nazis. That's probably where you recognize that name from. Absolutely it is The easy answer is to think that the sons of Gestapo are actually the ones that did this and then left notes claiming it because they were some kind of racist,

slash hate slash crazy people group. Very easy to think that, But as I said before, they never showed up before, and they never showed up again. I guess I will just quickly say that again. I don't know if they were right or not. But the flyers, the copies of flyers, the texts of flyers that we found, don't seem like a racist or hate group. They seem like a paranoid conspiracy group, but they don't. It doesn't seem like they are trying to promote some kind of propaganda of hate

or anything. All right, So does that make sense? Yeah, that totally makes sense. And yeah, I wanna I wanna jump ahead here a little bit because the reason I use those terms is that when I took a look at the state of Arizona, Oh, there are a lot of hate, a lot of hate. There were in two thousand and fourteen, there were sixteen active hate groups, plus the little ones that just passed under the radar, plus

the little militias. Where did you find this this list that I don't remember where I was at, Joe, I was, I was doing all kinds of googles on this stuff and just kind of information. There's probably much more than that,

or and maybe there's fewer. But the point is, I guess there's a lot of groups that are very secular in that manner, which is why I use that term, right, But I think there are also a lot of groups who are not considered hate groups that are that kind of you know, New World order everything like that that exists, and they do they often do do these one off things,

you know. It's there's a lot of mysteries that we've covered in the past where it's like this one weird thing happened and we don't know why, and all of a sudden we think, oh, it's this one crazy person who really believes in the New World Order. So I'm happy to say that it's the Sons of Thank You um and that that it's just a one off crazy person that has called themselves that, not a group at large. Whatever. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, you know, Timothy McVeigh was kind

of a one off thing thing too. I suspect this was not a group though, But well, let's let's go ahead, though, Let's let's suspend all of that. Let's just operate under the presumption that Sons of Gestapo is an organization and they have some kind of agenda. Sure, okay, even though again I've never heard of before and haven't ever heard of them. Again, it could be some small sell organization.

I don't know. But if you think about what's in the letter, the notes ignoring the New World Order part, okay, let's let's take that out of the frame for a second, and we only read into the stuff that talks about David Koresh and the branch of Vidians, in which, if you don't know, for folks who don't, they were an organization that the government. The simple version is a lot of shots were fired, the place went up and spoke.

And then if you also think about Ruby Ridge, which was a situation where the two guys, Randy Weaver and Ken Harris, who the government had a siege on their compound and uh Weaver's wife and child were killed. I thought it was just his wife and not his not his baby. They got killed. She was holding the baby, but I thought she got shot. I thought his sons got shot as well. I guess for me, like either way,

he suffered a great loss. And so somebody may have said you and there I remember this as a you know, I was in high school at the time, and it was all over the news and people were outraged about this and oh my gosh, all these things that are going on. It may have been that somebody finally said, you know what, I have to have an outlet. I have to show the world how screwed up this government is for doing this stuff. And my way of going about that is that I'm gonna derail this train, but

this is this is how we're gonna make it happen. Yeah. The problem with that is is that you're killing a lot more civilians and government employees number one, number two, none of them employees of the B A. T. F of the FBI. Absolutely true, But but then again, there was a lot of I'm going to use the phrase lone gunman. I mean McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh. He in Oklahoma City. It's the I'm know I'm going to pronounce this wrong, so please if I do, sorry, It's the Alfred P. P.

Murra Federal Building. That's how it's pronounced it. Every time I said it before. I felt like I said from but you know he did that. He took the law into his own hands. Weird fun fact. By the way, McVeigh was at Waco handing out flyers in wacos nine. I'm sorry, yeah, I'm sorry, I confused me. Don't do that. I'm easily confused. I just thought you meant like he was in Wicko when this was happening, not like he was in when that was happening, got it, handing up

pro gun flyers. Of course he was. But it's totally totally possible that there was some group who did this and then the group disbanded, or it was a person. I think I've talked about this before. Have you guys read The Monkey Wrench Gang? Yeah, well actually I haven't read it, but I've heard of it. Yeah, it's a I know I've talked about this on the podcast before. It's a book from the seventies about radical environmentalists. But they do this thing, and then once that thing is done,

they totally disband. I have read that book, Yes, I read it in middle school. Yeah, just don't worry about why I read it. That's fine, Just don't worry about that. Yeah, I mean, I think was one of the characters. Yeah, I think the glyns is the book after part of it is. I think you don't think it through a lot. You don't think about the fact that the authorities are

not going to publish your letter. You would assume you leave these letters all around and it's going to make it into the news and people are going to spread

what you're saying, and that's going to happen. And then you know, you do this thing, which is not great, and then you weave a letter and you think my message will be just everywhere, and then the FBI says, no, no, no, we're no, we're not going to publicize this at all, because why wouldn't we publicize this letter, And you go, but here's the deal, is open it up for copycats? Well but yeah, oh no, you you definitely do. But

this so this guy. If if these guys were really a thing and their note didn't get published by the FBI, all they gotta do is send a letter to a newspaper. Maybe you're sending letters to several newspapers. That's all you gotta do. If they had truly been a sort of political movement or trying to that's what would have happened if I agree, I'm not going to disagree with that. I'm just gonna argue both sides. Okay, fine, that's fine.

You're gonna stand and go both sides of the tracks. Yeah, okay, we're gonna go to our next theory slash suspect, which is an angry employee of named angry employee unnamed angry employee. Yeah, so that's this is a good one. It actually is kind of a good one. So if we look at what happened after the derailment, we're gonna move to Southern Pacific, who ran the or managed that portion of the line.

They were they were merged with Union Pacific, who is another giant rail line, and people still to this day you can see Southern Pacific and Union Pacific cars running all over this country. If you're near a freight line, you'll see them. Um. Well, the mergers of companies a don't happen overnight and be they tend to not happen as a surprise. And see everybody always looks at mergers as well. There's a bunch of people who are going to get laid off. You're going to lose your job

if you're merging. The thought, right is that you are you already have overlapped that you're competing in, and that your goal is to eliminate the competition in that area, so that there are two employees there and one of them is going to go not always the case, not

always the case. And so the theory here is that somebody who was a railroad employee was opposed to the merger and worried that they could potentially be losing their maybe they were losing their and so what they do is they went ahead and they intentionally sabotage the line in an attempt to make this such a bad thing that the merger with Union Pacific wouldn't go through and therefore their their position would be safe. That's that's that's

really the basis of this. The worst theory I've ever heard. It's but there's there's variance on that somebody who got fired, somebody who knew somebody who got fired. That's either by Amtrak or by Southern Pacific. It could be Idlan. So there's there's been a lot of suspects to look at. But the problem with the I'm opposed to the merger, or we can't we hate amtrack blah blah blah. Is that Southern Pacific itself had been in decline for a

long time. In the early nineteen hundred, Southern Pacific was known as the Octopus because there they had so many long done, they had so many lines, and they sprawled so far all over this country, and their central help was on the west coast. That they were they were huge, but of course they were declining just like everybody else.

And by the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties they were in a dire situation and people were probably more worried about losing their job because the lines were getting shut down than anything else. So so the net case, it makes rational sense to not a post a merger and not screw up the line. But you know, and I talked to people all the time who believe all sorts of in any things that simply aren't true, And so you know, don't overrule ignorance and dumb. Know that's that's

an actual thing. Though you're laughing, but I mean it is. Though you're right, I shouldn't be laughing at it, but it is true. There are people who just don't believe any propaganda that's throwing But here's the Here's the interesting thing is that from the job lost perspective, I looked up the merger of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific, and I couldn't find any reporting that ever talked about the

number of jobs that were cut. Doesn't mean jobs weren't cut, but it sounds to me like maybe it wasn't a giant slash and burn operation. It might have been, would have been reported. You have found some news I would have expected to, and I never. I never found hardly anything about it. None of them ever talked about that, So I feel like the merger was kind of an

amicable thing. Well, the thing about it is, you know, you need if this guy was employed to say, working on the tracks, which it sounds like he had the tools to do that kind of stuff, then they really can't cut that workforce by all that much. If at all they still have its probably a pretty thin workforce at that time anywhere. Probably, Yeah, I still have to

maintain those tracks. Yeah. And you actually bring up a good point right there, which is as an employee, you've got the tools, which is kind of an important thing here. There's two ways to pull the spikes out. You can use a hydraulic tool which makes it go super fast. But you've got to have the truck and the machinery to do that, and it's it's kind of obvious if that's happening, or you've got to use a giant pride bar. And those pride bars are, you know, pretty the height

of a man. They're five or six feet high, the height of a person. Devon, don't give me that. Look. There's a third way, okay, uh, when I did this, this when I was a kid, and that is you know, you and your friends walk along the tracks and you look for loose ones and you pull them out. But they pulled so many of them out that's impossible, I know, and that's not going to have that kind of luck.

But that means that they would have been using company tools, which means they were company tools that nobody could tell where they were used at and nobody would look at the company tools and never be able to know if the company tools were used on this particular site. It's not so hard to find a long crowbar, You're right. You can go to you can go to the home depot and buy a giant crowbar, but it takes a

lot of effort. And time to pull those things manually. Well, the hydraulic one is why I think that if it was an employee, it would have been done via hydraul So here's a question, how often do you know how often that line was inspected? I don't. Is that something inspected regularly, but I don't know what the frequency of

regular means. So I guess my question would be, is that something you can pull a couple spikes up every day or whatever, and then you just wait until it's your right hour to pull up the really important ones where the lines or the rail are joined to other, push it over and then spike them back down. Is that do you think? I mean that's because for me, it's kind of like a canvas, right you can pull certain pins out and the canvas won't collapse on itself.

And then it could be it's something that you would be doing over time until you find exactly the right moment. I could see if somebody was able to pull let's say, half a dozen a day. They I think they pulled like spikes something in that neighborhood. It was in the twenties, so I could see over the course of two days doing it half a dozen more at a time, and then the rail the line not moving, you haven't weakened its foundations, and then on that last day yank and

the remaining half or third or quarter or whatever. That is absolutely plausible. That's absolutely a possible way to do it. I't even thought about that. I always imagine this job isn't all at once. I you know, I had to until literally that's just the small time. I still think you could have pulled them at once to if you had that right to not that hard to people or whatever. Yeah, but I just mean if if, if, if we're saying it was done by a crowbar that you get you know,

like ace or home deeper or whatever. It is going to take you longer. It is manual work. But if that's what you have, you might do it days. Makes it easy to not be caught on the track pulling spikes when the next car, next train comes down the line. Yeah, well you can hear the trains and field that you can, but you know what, you know, people on the guys that are driving that train, they see what's down the line,

and unless it's hidden behind something like that's weird. There was some dude on the track yesterday, Hey, somebody reported a dude on the track again today there's a thing called desert camouflage. But also or standing right under the trust all wearing it right now, I can barely see, but you hear the train coming, you can feel it. For a wild way, just jump right under the bridge, right if you're standing under the bridge, they're not going to see you standing under there. You just sit down

for all it goes by and then you know. Yeah. The other thing about the spot that they picked her I should say he picked is there's uh or she come on terrorism here is that there's a road just to the east of the rail line, although it's not much of a road. Uh, it's really hardly a road at all. But that's that was but that that wasn't the case back then. Oh yeah, it wasn't there then, because I would imagine it would be for maintenance purposes

and such. According to the articles and stuff that I've read, a lot of the roads were at best barely there because they were farmland. So it wasn't an easy It took an hour and a half to get to the wreck side of the side of the wreck from Phoenix, so you were driving on these ad bad roads now today, evidently it doesn't take that long because the roads are much better. But they've been created, so I don't know,

but don't rely on that, right, Okay. I was going to move to our next theory slash suspect, and let's you have any other on that that? Okay, really our last Oh, actually fun fact before we move on. You keep saying fun fact and then not saying things that are fun. This is actually a fun fact. So I didn't know this until my research. But according to the Internet, you know who Sprint is, right, like the phone company, the cell phone company. H turns out, according to the

research that I came across, Sprint was created by Southern Pacific. Well, it was created. Uh. The acronym of Sprint stands for Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network networking telephone. That's what's a telephone? No, I don't care, it's telephony. No, it's telephone. It was. It was an internal communications system and then it and they branched it out and it eventually became Sprint the cellphone. There you go. So, hey, something good, something large from

Southern Pacific. Last theory, it was somebody angry at the rail line because they were the rail line was taking their land, because when it's a government organization, they don't know if anybody you've ever had this where they annex your land, they say, hey, we're gonna pay you a price for this land, and you say take a hike. They say, well, you can give it to us for this amount of money, or we can just take it.

Called Yes, because my family had property taken for that very reason where they take it for the greater good of the country. Yes, that's exactly. It was an access road and right, well yeah, yeah, but they pay you a rate, and it could very well be that somebody was p oed because it was that and was taken from them, or it ran through the middle of their farmland. And it's a giant nuisance because you can't drive across

the field. You gotta drive twenty minutes that way and then hang a left turn and then hang another left turn and drag twenty minutes back the other direction when you could have just gone two minutes straight. This feels silly because we literally just talked about the fact that this rail line had been established since like the late nineteen hundreds. Right, that's true, But they move not they move lines, and they upgrade lines and they may have expanded.

I mean, I don't know, Devon. I'm saying that this is the theory that is out the theory. I'm just dispelling it. I agree that the problem is this sounds like crazy farmer John when freaking crazy and did this crazy thing because he's crazy farmer John. And that's all there is to the theory. Yeah, there's not much there. Yeah, yeah, So I was just giving my two cents of I feel like that's dumb because I feel like the train through rail has been there forever train rails a technical term.

And here's the other thing. Is the other thing is that is that after you've you've done your dear nasty deat against Southern Pacific and AMTRAC, guess what, the tracks don't go away. They're still there. Huh. If you really wanted to do that, you would get rid of that whole trustle, right, you would, really you get rid of a big old chunk of the rail. Well, you do

something way more destructive. Wait, wait, Devin, you you just may have hit on something, which is if you remember the nine nine City of San Francisco line, when that derailed, destroyed the trestle. They actually moved. Joe was and I were talking about this the other day. Is if you look at pictures of where that line is now, they've moved it. They've taken out one of the trestles, they moved the line so it only crosses the river once. And that maybe somebody who had that idea that like

the are you. Then they would have to not know anything about trains, which goes against everything that we've been talking about, because they would have to know. They would have to not know that the car improvements had been made so that they don't do that anymore. I mean, this is both ways your damn if If you don't, I think it's probably not. You might be a local recor rescue worker who wanted some overtime. I don't think that's it. You don't think so, Okay, that's all of

my theories. You guys got anything else? I got a couple of theories. Okay, this is a fun one one possibility. And this again it's like, you know, kind of weak but just conjecture. But maybe somebody on the train had an enemy who wanted him dead. It's Joe's go to theory time. Kids. This is why I really wish people could hear my eyes roll. Yeah, if we were doing like the show, that would be much improved. But it is possible though, it's just certainly I think more plausible

in the crazy Farmer theory. I would agree, I would Yeah. And you know, it could have been it could have been somebody, say who it could have been one of the crew, like say, you know the engineer or the conductor, who you know the guy who did get killed? Even possibly they knew they were gonna be on that train and they knew when the train ran, and yeah's apply one. Another possibility is that it was just just some random, twisted lunatic like kind of like the Union bomber. Have

you ever heard of Sylvester Matushka. Why do I recognize that name? Yeah? Wait? Wait is he? Wait? Wait? Is he in Europe? Yeah? Hungarian? Yes, I know who you're talking about. Yeah, he has a mechanical engineer who got a really got a charge out of causing train crashes. So he yeah, and so at night and like August August thirty one, he caused a derail with nineteen thirty one. Yeah, he he derailed the Berlin Bosel Express train in Germany. And no desks in that case, but a lot of

people got injured. And then a month later in September, he blew up a bridge. This it was a Vieta express us was going towards Vienna and caught it crossed a bridge over a deep ravine near Budapest, and he blew up the bridge. It plunged into the ravine. Twenty two people died and a whole bunch of other people get severely And he psycho that he was, he was, he was right there on the spot because he was apparently,

like I said, got off on this. And at the time when when the guilty party at the scene of the crime, jumping up and down going yeah, I know. Well at the time he was. He was questioned a little bit, but he said he had been riding on the train and he just crawled out and that's why you're standing here. And so they let him go. But

eventually the law caught up with him later. It's an interesting story, but his his motive was apparently, and he was quoted as saying, quote, direct trains because I like to see people die. I like to hear them scream unquote. So maybe it was just some flaming psycho. That's possible. I mean, you can't rule it out, absolutely cannot. Yeah. So yeah, interesting thing about Sylvester anyway, he got he got tried for his crimes and he was locked away in prison, but he escaped in and he was never

heard from again. Yeah, another mystery. We let's talk about that one someday. Okay. Uh, So we're at the end. Uh. The reassurances that I wanted to give people. I think we've talked about a that they well the lines together now for the most part, and they are doing that a to make it a more comfortable run to to be because people can't sabotage the line, well not not in that particular way. They can still sabotage the line, but yes, they can't do it the way that we've

talked about. And see it actually makes the line itself overall more structurally sound therefore reduces wear and tear. So that that's a really big reason why they do. The other thing that we talked about that is a reassurance for folks is that the connections between cars today are engineered to withstand a force at nine miles an hour and words, trains don't ever go, not not often definitely

start building high speed rail. Hey yeah, but then those trains do go sixty plus to seventy plus, but they can. But the point is they are built to withstand the strain put on them at twist torsion. Tortion is the word I'm looking for while moving at nine miles. So they're not going to break, which is why they are so much safer. And we don't get the crazy pilots. So take trains, guys. So trains are still safe just

like planes. I really really swear they are. Yeah they are. Okay, Well, let's get onto the fun details, the last little bits and bits that we have, the parts that you all skip over, yep, So don't go ahead, because we have little things in here that we need to talk about you need to be aware of, so no skipping this time. First off, we're gonna talk about our website. Website is, of course, Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. We're going to have the episodes to listen to and download there. We

have transcripts. Now, we've got some folks helping us with transcripts again, so we've got transcripts on there. Also, we have research links for each episode, a couple of them per episode, on there. We also have the option on the right hand bar. We've still got merchandise available. We've added a bunch of merchandise, and we also have a couple of ways to donate to the show if you

want to. This is totally optional, but there is the option of using Patreon, which is patreon dot com slash Thinking Sideways, which is a reoccurring donation per episode, totally totally up to you and not required in any way, shape or form. Or if you want to do one time, you can totally do that as well. That is available PayPal. Super appreciate you guys, have no idea how much that saved us. I do want to talk talk about the fact that everybody has probably figured out by now we're

talking to you from the future. The future, but we have a bunch of issues with downloads in the past being slow or not working, and then we had the server problems and things were a giant mess and we got a lemon. We were sold a product that didn't work, and I apologize. But by the time this has come out, I've been working hours on end so far we've almost got it all squared away. Everything should be fine. Thank

you for being patient. With us and at this point, if we've got it figured out right, which we never have this problem again, which we said last time. This time we have it on good authority from some other podcasts that people like that we listened to. Sometimes they're always asking why, Okay, let's move on to the other stuff that we've got here. You're gonna be listening to us through iTunes, Uh, some people are a lot of

people are still doing that. You can find us on there if you do subscribe and leave a rating for iTunes and all other streaming sources. Our podcast fee did move, So if you are noticing issues with it not updating with the current stuff, and you see this stuff on social media on our website, you may have to unsubscribe and resubscribe because those things sometimes don't always catch the update.

So just so you know that. But I said streaming, we're streaming on well just about everywhere you can stream at this point, So use whatever tool you want to use. And by the way, if you can review us on those, that'd be awesome. To wait a minute. On Twitter, we are on Twitter where you cannot stream us, but on Twitter we are thinking sideways. You can see some awesome memes and some tumbler stuff and also lots of pictures of trains, yes, and fake pictures of Devon. Devin Devin,

I I'm Devin. I run the Twitter, so if you like me, you should follow us on Twitter suddenly turned into a population cut. You know, we hit We hit more than two thousand followers this past week. I didn't know that. Yeah, good job. Thank you all of your memes. I've actually started using the memes. I'm badly using them and I drive. The other places that you can see as used memes would be on Facebook. We have the Facebook page and the Facebook group. Uh so both of those.

The page has a lot of stuck content. The group is where everybody gets together and does their discussions about different bits from episodes and just whatever we all find interesting. We have the ability to receive emails. The emails would come through Gmail because it is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. You have feedback about an episode, do you have an episode suggestion, or you have questions or concerns about something, Please the immediate answers to send us

an email and let's talk about it. Usually there's a very simple answer, rather than folks sometimes get upset and they will post a comments, comments on our website or things like iTunes, and then it's hard to have the conversation because they're buried in that massive stuff. So send us an first. We like talking to you. Also, don't forget we have a subreddit. We do. It's thinking Sideways,

not Thinking sideways pod. Uh, you can find us. It's not super active, but there are episode discussions that happen sometimes, and the more users we get there, the more active it will be. So if you if you like, if you're a Reddit user, that's a place to hang out, and the more of you that are there, the more it's going to be active. It's like our Facebook page. That thing was super slow forever in a day, and then suddenly there was a whole group of people and

now it's constantly busy. Someday I can't think of anything else that I have to tell anybody? Can you? Guys, I don't want to talk in ears anymore? Done? You don't want what talking to people's ears anymore? Okay? I can accept that. So Devin has done talking into your ear. So we're gonna go ahead and in the episode, uh so until next week. Woo stole my line everybody,