mountaineer wrote:
"You have to be pretty darn distracted not to see or hear an oncoming train."
You'd be surprised. Especially if there's snow falling.
If the engine was electric-powered, there might be no sounds (except a slight-but-increasing "hum" in the rails) until the train was right upon them, unless the engineer was sounding the horn from some distance away..
And if the train was moving fast (say, 60mph or faster), and the engineer didn't have advance knowledge that there would be people on the tracks, he might not have actually blown the horn until he saw them. If a curve was involved, by the time he saw them (and sounded the horn), he might almost "be upon them" already.
One other thought. If this was a massive crowd, the people on the tracks may have had "nowhere to move to" even after they saw the train bearing down upon them.
