Originally Posted by
indyfabz
I work in the rail industry. While suicide by train is a thing, you have to understand that modern locomotives are a lot quieter these days. It's not possible to tell from the photo, but in this instance we could be talking about an electrified railroad. Those locomotives are usually even quieter than diesel-electric power, especially when coasting. You also have to ask whether the deceased was wearing something like ear buds. As for sight, as it's been pointed out, one can be screened when there are two tracks. This sort of thing has happened plenty of times before with both cars and pedestrians.
BTW...Something like this is usually quite traumatic for the engineer. It has been reported that a victim's eyes seem the size of grapefruits when he/she realizes they just made a deadly mistake.
Mr. Bill has correctly identified this as a diesel line. However, it's a Chicago-style push-pull system with a locomotive at one end only, so half of the time the train is headed by a passenger car with a cab in the front. I can hear these trains coming from pretty far off, but have no idea what the ambient noise is like at that crossing, or if two trains were involved.