Programming Notes: Train-track trespassing
Inside my reporting on Lake Accotink (and how I got caught at Audi Field)
Programming Notes (formerly Post Production) columns dish on how The Machine’s most deeply reported stories came together and share anecdotes and insights that didn’t make the final edit.
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The Lake Accotink train-collision story was one of the first I pursued after starting The Machine. Most of it — the perspectives from locals, the revelation of the busted fence by the tracks, my run-in with railroad police — came together in a day.
The last of it had to wait months.
Below the paywall: how my reporting process started and (eventually) ended, reflections on responsibility in tragedy, and a story about the other time I trespassed on the job, for a piece about D.C. United.
That time didn’t end well, either.
Up on deadly tracks
At summer’s start, a freight train ran over the Lake Accotink Park bridge and swept three lives away. Diego Arriaza Blanco, 28, was struck by the train, Fairfax County police said. Yeraldin Pardo, also 28, a…
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