Anyone remember train detonators?
I lived near Hornsby, so we had the Main Line, North Shore line and Central Coast/Newcastle line meet at Hornsby.
In the early mid 90s, they went through the process of electrifying everything north of Hornsby and removing all the wood sleepers and replacing the tracks on the concrete ones we have now. So there was always night works. You'd hear a lot of the train detonators going off all the time. Sometimes, when we snuck out on to the lines, you'd find the odd unexploded detonator and throw rocks at it to get it to go off with a massive bang.
Anyway, we had a guy at school who found an unexploded detonator. Had one in his hand and it detonated and blew off a couple of fingers and destroyed his hand. Poor prick had to go to schools and do safety messages for State Rail.
Pretty much got careless shrugs and if we still found them, would peg stones at them to get them to go off. Didn't pick them up though.
The other thing you'd do is put a 1c coin on top of a 2c coin and put on tracks. When train ran over it, they would pancake together and we'd have 3c coins. LOL.
And hanging out of Red Rattlers until 1992 when they discontinued their service. Doors chocked open. There was a safety video we had to watch - the kid in it was wearing a Nightmare on Elm Street 4 t-shirt and soundtracked to Run To Paradise by The Choirboys. Only 30cm between trains and not much more to the power line poles. Ahhh...the carefree days.
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