In 1971 I was named to the Michigan Governor’s Commision on Railroad Crossing Safety and since I’d been working at Grand Trunk Western Railroad since 1948 as a Claim Agent I already had a load of experience on the subject. I knew one thing for sure. The only one who could prevent a railroad crossing accident was the motorist. We could provide a sight line by cutting brush and such, in some instances we would get together with the State and install railroad crossing warning lights or perhaps crossing gates but you just could not expect a speeding train to stop. The truth was once a locomotive engineer sees there is an auto or a truck on or near the crossing it is too late to stop a speeding train. It generally takes from a quarter to a half a mile to stop. They just cannot stop. With the help of Roger Thurgaland, a freelance AV man, we produced a slide show titled They Can’t Stop!
We started it out with the popular recording stars,The Platters, singing their hit song “Only You.” That is all we played just the opening, just two words, “Only You!” It was enough to really hook the teen age audiences and we went right into a fast moving slide show that made it very clear that a railroad crossing was no place to mess around.
We sent out about a thousand copies of our presentation to Michigan Schools and it was used in their driver education classes. When other railroad saw our presentation they began distributing it to states in which they operated. In some states, without our permission railroads copied our show even using our sound track and replacing our train photos with photos of our engines. When I reported this to our president he laughed and said he’d take care of it. He did. He took me to New York City and we showed it to at a big room full of railroad presidents and about half a dozen were cussin’ and hissing as they watched it and promised to take action with their alleged A-V Producers back home. Our president was really pleased when we finished the meeting in New York. Some very big railroads with very big Audio Video departments were involved. Our Mission, of course, was not to sell products or such. We wanted to share what we had done and we certainly did. It was such a joy working with a railroad president who shared my passion for safety. GTW soon went from one of the worst to one of the safest railroad in America. It took a lot of dedicated people who shared this passion.
Art,
Not sure if you would remember me, but I am Roger Thurgaland’s son. I was just doing a web search on his name and this was one of the only entries that came up that was not related to his obituary. I remember this presentation and my father working on it. I also remember you and your kindness to a somewhat rambunctious rather hyper active child. I can even remember a party at dad’s house that you were at.
Thank you so much for remembering Roger. I cannot express how much it means to me to see him getting credit for work he performed. There is so much more that is not available, most likely because it was pre internet boom.
Would love to hear from you if you have the chance.