Francis Ridge: "This incident occurred during the massive sighting wave of 1973, and within a few days of one of our rare MADAR detections. My wife got a call early that morning. I was at work. She told me that the man was very serious about so…
Francis Ridge: "This incident occurred during the massive sighting wave of 1973, and within a few days of one of our rare MADAR detections. My wife got a call early that morning. I was at work. She told me that the man was very serious about something that had happened that morning. The man calling was a conductor on a L&N train and had just had an encounter with a UFO at 6:50 AM, just a few miles east of my home. To be precise, it was at a point on the tracks near St. Phillips, which is about 8-miles east of my home in Mt. Vernon. I got in the car and headed home, called the man and taped the interview.
The original train crew had experienced engine trouble near Upton, a little town 3-4 miles northwest of Mt. Veron. One of the rear diesel units had been overheating and the Burlington engine was pulling a 6,000-ton load, overloaded under these conditions. The maintenance man at Upton was a 30-year man and told the conductor that the rear unit was "dead" and that there was, in his words, "no use messin' with it". He'd already tried. In any case, the new crew lumbered in to Mt. Vernon, taking 20-25 minutes longer to get there than usual. The sky was clear, temperature was a cool 55-degrees, wind was calm. Again, it was about 6:50 AM.
They had gone through Mt. Vernon and were nearing the Lamont crossing, 2-miles east of the city, heading east for Evansville. The sun was just barely peeking over the tree tops. The two men in the front engine saw a very bright, but distant, light in the sky coming out of the north. At first they thought it was an aircraft, then later decided that it couldn't be. The object was very bright and was tracking north to south, pulsating from real bright to dim to bright. The distant light appeared to travel a short distance, 50-60' between pulsations. The light finally turned more east towards Evansville and disappeared.
When they neared Caborn (6-7 miles east of Mt. Vernon), the lead conductor told the rear conductors by intercom that t..
