I'm wondering whether you can tell the difference between standing on the tracks and taking a picture with a very deep telephoto lens while standing off the tracks where they would bend leftwards.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

Huh.... above all, stupidity, I guess. Stepping between the moving parts of a switch is the real height of stupidity (but it happens, here too). But I can also imagine someone's feet slipping under the rail between two sleepers.Or, it wasn't getting stuck, but falling.

(Track crossing rule No. 1: watch out in both directions, preferably for every single track you cross. Rule No. 2: don't step on rails - they can be slippery -, don't step between close rails, don't step on nails, step only on sleepers.)

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

I used to walk the tracks for miles as a child, balancing on the rails. Very common in rural areas.  I recall all the warnings about getting feet caught between the rails, taking a nap on the tracks, getting caught on a bridge, and hitching rides on box cars . My dad would hitch rides on the cars for hundreds of miles when he was a youth (topside or underneath, quite common in the US during the 1920s to 40s).  My grandmother used to tell a story about being out in the fields working and looking up at a passing train to see my father sitting on top of a box car, his black hair blowing in the breeze.  Apparently he was angry about something and decided to visit his uncle and cousins in East Texas for a while!

I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears

No. It WAS lame.  And now I am going to try to explain why.

The Great Depression hit the agricultural Midwest VERY hard. Yet during those awful years, my grandfather figured out how to send his two sons to college. He believed in education in ways only a first-generation hyphenated American could.  So here's how he accomplished this amazing feat.

My father and uncle had two younger sisters and together with their mother moved into a house in Lindsborg Kansas--a distance about 300 km.  My grandfather stayed behind to work the farm.  The college boys had to return to the form for critical moments like harvest and planting, but generally, the travel cost and distance meant the separation was quite real.

In order to finance the household in Lindsborg, my grandmother took in laundry (among other things like raising egg-laying hens.) My father probably collected and delivered that load of clothes on those lines.  He had saved enough from tips to have purchased a camera and so he took a picture of the enterprise that got him his precious camera.

My uncle would become a world-class chemist who spent his career designing oil refineries for Phillips in Bartlesville OK.  My father became a preacher.  I absolutely detested being a preacher's kid so I have ambivalent feelings about the wasted enterprise represented by that line of clothes.

My father probably hated the work.  For evidence I cite the fact that my mother had the first clothes dryer in our little town.  In Minnesota with it's long winters, washing clothes WAS a hassle for much of the year.  And preachers need clean clothes.  So when the natural gas pipeline from Kansas came through town, things like a clothes dryer could be afforded on a preacher's paycheck.  And between the automated washer and tumble dryer, the job that required a full day of hard work each week was reduced to minor chore that could be accomplished while doing something else.

"Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"

Tumble dry to dry, I believe.  

They use an electric domestic appliance called a tumble dryer.

Do you have laundromats where you live? They should have clothes spinners and industrial-size tumble-dryers.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

In France about a third of the population have tumble dryers. Very inefficient energy wise (heating air, putting it through the clothes, then releasing it outside). My family had one when I was growing up. So most still hang dry their clothes, in small increment, most often inside.

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.