Train drivers prevent disaster, stopping just metres from man on tracks

The near-death experience of an unidentified man was shared by a train driver on the Captain in Train Facebook page. The video showed a mysterious man standing on the train tracks, apparently hoping to be hit. The driver, Choonya Sathiranon and his colleague Thepnurak Choochuai, working in the Hat Yai district, Songkhla, South Thailand were operating express train number 169 when they spotted the man standing in the middle of the tracks.

Realising the danger, they quickly applied the emergency brake to stop the train immediately. However, the man standing on the track was far closer than the standard stopping distance for a train. All the train conductors could do was desperately hope that the train would stop in time. If it didn’t, the man would certainly be killed, reported KhaoSod.

Luckily, the train managed to screech to a halt, stopping less than 10 metres away from the man. The driver admitted that his heart dropped at the moment, but he was also glad that he and his colleague managed to prevent a disastrous accident, saving the man’s life without any harm to any person or property.

They attributed the life saved to their alertness and experiences accumulated over the years, as well as the teamwork of their co-workers, for a happy ending to this terrifying story.

If they had not succeeded, a man would have lost his life, and the train would have had to wait for the rescuers to collect the corpse causing major delays.

Last year, an unidentified man was reported dead after being hit by a Dark Red Line train, of the State Railway of Thailand, between Lak Hok and Don Mueng Stations.

The train operator, SRT Electrified Train Company Limited, insisted that the man wasn’t a passenger and sneaked into the restricted area for some other unknown reason.

The official Facebook page of the SRT train, RED Line SRTRT, explained that the incident happened at about 10.45pm on Monday, June 20.

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