What Safety is All About

For suggestion or comments contact Dan Reed via E-Mail

During the summer of 1960, I was working at Austin on the Old Llano Branch. We had two sixteen hour a day locals that served the granite quarries west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country.

One bright sonny morning at Sneads Spur, we were dragging about 20 loaded cars of granite rock destine for the Aransas Pass Jetties. Our head brakeman was riding out on the side of a rock gondola. He was suddenly struck by a large timber hidden by Johnson Grass and knocked off the car and went under.

I held what was left of him in my lap in the back of a pickup while we tried to get him to the Hospital at Burnet. He died five hours after that accident. It's something I'll never forget.

The day before the accident, he had talked about how he had it made, house paid for that very month and two sons on football scholarships to college. Life was good. I don't want to remember it, but I'll never forget.

His sons went on the be star college football players, one an all-american, but Earl never knew it.

He had no chance. He got on the rear end of the car and when he was knocked off he went right under the wheels of next car . If he would have been on the leading end of that car, he may have been able to scramble out before being run over.

Dan is an engineer working out of Miller - Broadway - Ney Yard.

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