Plainfield Trustee Angry Running Freight Train Left Unattended
(CBS) -- A Plainfield trustee was blowing the whistle on a railroad practice in his village that he believes is unsafe.
Trustee Jim Racich said he found a half-mile long train hauling oil or chemical tankers parked near downtown Plainfield for hours, with no one in the cabs of the locomotives.
He said he noticed the freight train parked on the Illinois River Line when he went to work out early Tuesday morning. Hours later, he saw it was still sitting there.
Racich called police and they were the ones who discovered no one in either of the cabs.
He said that's just a terrorism opportunity waiting to happen, citing the planes flown into the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11.
"We have to wake up to reality, and reality is there are a whole lot of individuals in our society that do strange things," Racich said.
A spokesman for the Canadian National Railway said the crew followed the law, and secured the train when they left, even though the engines were still running.
Racich said he hopes state and federal legislators can make some changes in the law.