Decapitation by a train

Railway injuries are not uncommon, especially in countries with many ‘level crossings’ (called ‘grade crossings’ in the USA), where a public road crosses a railway track with either no barrier at all or with only a flimsy lifting pole. Many vehicles are struck each year by passing locomotives.

Few rail passengers are killed or injured in moving trains compared with accidents to railway staff and to other types of accident on railway property. Track workers may be run down and some die from electrocution from overhead cables. The pathology of all these is no different from accidents elsewhere, the interest lying in the occupational epidemiology and preventive aspects.

A fairly common railway fatality is the suicide who lays himself in front of an approaching train. Decapitation is the most common injury and the obvious features are the local tissue destruction, usually with grease, rust or other dirt soiling of the damaged area. As well as lying down before a locomotive, another common method of suicide in large cities is to jump from the subway platform of an underground ‘tube’ or ‘metro’ system. Here injuries are sometimes complicated by high-voltage electrical lesions, as the typical traction voltage of an electric railway is in excess of 600 volts.