Be it accident or suicide, the railroad industry has made little headway in reducing the number of trespasser fatalities. After all these years, Tom Donovan can't shake the sound. "Like hitting a pumpkin," he says. It's the sound of a 400-ton train striking human flesh, a person who, just moments before, had been walking and talking and breathing. In the sterile parlance of the railroads, such collisions are known as critical incidents. To the men and women who run trains -- the engineers who see the faces and hear the sickening thuds -- the term hardly does justice to the emotional trauma that follows. read more...