(The following story was published in the January 13 issue of the Central Maine Daily Sentinel.)
READFIELD, Maine — A Massachusetts man escaped injury Sunday when a train demolished his snowmobile.
The Warden Service summonsed Scott Raptelis, 32, of Northampton, Mass., at 12:24 p.m. and charged him with operating a snowmobile on a railway.
Warden Robert Decker said Raptelis had just filled up his 1995 Arctic Cat with gasoline at the Maranacook Store on Route 17 when he drove the snowmobile onto the railroad tracks.
“Shortly after that, he saw the train and actually got the snowmobile stuck on the tracks,” Decker said Sunday. “It was totaled.”
The snowmobile was worth about $2,000, he said.