Don’t bury the evidence — some noses are built to find it.

One winter, a railroad worker was operating a train remotely. With snow on the ground and the cab door wide open, it wasn’t exactly ideal conditions — but the real problem? He wasn’t paying attention.

The train ran right off the end of the line.

The worker was thrown and injured, but when asked what happened, he said the “end of track” warning post must not have been there. It looked like a case of poor signage — and not poor judgment. Engel Metallurgical was brought in to help sniff out the truth — with a little more science than even I could manage.

On the last visit to the site after the snow melted, a piece of the post was found lying in the ditch. Back at the lab, the engineers examined it closely, then used a scanning electron microscope and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to run an elemental analysis. What they found? A faint trace of blood on the metal.

Turns out, the warning post had been there — and the worker had driven over it. Realizing he was at fault, he threw the broken post into the ditch and hoped no one would find it.