(The following article by Stan Maddux was posted on the Gary Post-Tribune website on June 1. Joe Adkins is a member of BLET Division 153 in Garrett, Ind.)
GARY, Ind. — A Chicago-bound freight train was struck by a piece of concrete and its engine’s windshield shattered as the train crossed the Kankakee River.
Police arrested three fishermen on felony charges as a result of the incident.
One was charged with the tossing the concrete.
“Unbelievable,” was the reaction from Joe Adkins, a conductor on the CSX train when he heard the rock crash into the windshield.
On Monday about 1:30 p.m., the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Office was called to the CSX tracks over the Kankakee River east of Kingsford Heights.
Railroad authorities told police someone tossed a chunk of concrete above the train bridge where it spans the river.
Adkins said the projectile spider-webbed the glass windshield on the lead engine as the westbound train was crossing the bridge at 50 miles per hour.
Fortunately, the glass was bullet proof and stopped the rock from crashing through.
Had the rock destroyed the window, the engine crew could have been seriously injured, said Adkins, who sat in the locomotive with the engineer.
“It just shattered the window. You could see the imprint where the rock hit it,” said Adkins, who resides in Cromwell, Indiana.
Adkins said he noticed three men fishing at the riverbank as the locomotive approached the bridge and gave a physical description of each man after the glass broke.
Three men fitting the description were located by police still along the river’s edge.
While questioned, Brandon Adkins, 20, of Walkerton
said, “I threw the object at the train, but I didn’t intend for it to break the window,” the police report quoted him as saying.
Adkins along with Chad Nichols, 19, of Walkerton and Rodger Nichols, Jr., 20, of South Bend were each charged with Class D felony criminal recklessness and trespassing.
All three men also admitted to placing old railroad spikes on the tracks to see if the train would flatten them.
Despite the damage, Adkins said he could still see out the engineer’s side of the windshield to continue on and arrived in Chicago on schedule.
The train originated in Garrett.