The thread that links Jimmy Hubert to the place where he vanished and to the spot where he appeared, more than two days later, is a silver one. It is steel and wood and gravel, a train line.
According to his family, the Georgia Tech student was riding a CSX freight train — "train surfing," some call it. Hubert, 24, may have fallen.
If his injuries are any indication, he fell hard. Hubert suffered broken ribs and vertebrae, bleeding in the brain and reputed temporary paralysis, as well as hypothermia. But it could have been worse: safety experts say Hubert was engaged in something so hazardous it’s been likened to bungee jumping over crocodiles.
Train officials don’t keep data specifically about train surfing, but they consider it one of the most serious forms of trespassing on rail property. Anyone who rides the exterior of a train, they say, is risking loss of limb or life. They’re prepared to prosecute people who do it and have security in place to prevent it.
To recap: It was around midnight, Oct. 16, when Hubert's friends noticed the senior aerospace engineering student had left a party. They found him 55 hours later, bloody and unconscious, alongside rail lines about halfway between downtown Atlanta and Decatur. It was seven miles from the party site.
When his friends found him, Hubert no longer had his shoes or wallet. Police are investigating whether he was robbed.
His father, meantime, released a statement corroborating what some had suspected.
“It appears that he somehow got aboard a moving freight train,” the statement read, in part. “…Did he do something reckless? It appears that he did.”
Train surfing, riding atop or on the sides of trains, is practiced all over the world. In some cultures, people do it for practical reasons; they hitch rides atop train cars to get somewhere. But in other countries, train surfing exists solely for the thrill — the wind in your hair, death's breath on your shoulder. YouTube is filled with videos of train surfers — they're almost always boys or young men — defying death and common sense. It's also part of popular culture: In at least one movie, James Bond train surfs.
There's something about trains that some people find irresistible, said Libby Rector Snipe, director of communications for Operation Lifesaver Inc. Founded more than 40 years ago, the organization stresses safety in switching yards, rail crossings and other place where trains and people come together.
“I don’t know why people are so interested in being on trains, unless it’s because it’s a thrill,” she said. “There’s an allure to it, a lot of romanticism to it.”
A fair amount of danger, too. Nearly 500 people were killed last year while trespassing on railroad property, Operation Lifesaver statistics show. In Georgia, 19 people were killed on rail property last year.
The fatalities fell into three broad categories: people walking along rail lines, trespassing in switching yards, or jumping on or off moving trains. Data also show that more than 50 percent of the fatalities involved alcohol or some other drug, Snipe said.
“It’s all trespassing,” she said, “and it’s extremely hazardous.”
So hazardous that one blogger ranked train surfing just below volcano surfing (riding a flat board down the side of an active volcano).
Dangerous enough that CSX employs its own police force to keep people away from trains and company property. Officers are trained to give first-time trespassers a warning, said John Walsh, who oversees the department. The second time, offenders get a written warning. The third? Law-breakers may face 24 hours in jail and fines.
“The short message is: Stay as far away from trains as you can,” Walsh said.
The message doesn't always sink in, said Mike Booth, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration. The agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation, compiles annual statistics on train safety. Those numbers, he said, show the train industry has become progressively safer.
There’s just one category that confounds safety experts: the number people who are injured or killed trespassing on trains and train property. In recent years, he said, there’s been a “slight uptick” in those statistics.
“It’s hard to say why,” he said. “The issue is a nagging phenomenon.”
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