Locomotive Engineer Reports UFO, Turns Out to Be Another Train Coming the Other Way

A BNSF locomotive engineer filed a UFO report with the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday after observing what he described as 'an unidentified bright light approaching at high speed on a fixed trajectory' near Williston, North Dakota. The object was subsequently identified as the headlight of an eastbound intermodal train on the adjacent main track. 'In my defense, it was 3 a.m. and I'd been staring at empty prairie for six hours,' said engineer Rusty Coupler, who filed the report from the cab of his westbound grain train. 'A bright light appeared on the horizon, growing in intensity, moving directly toward me at approximately 60 miles per hour. My first thought was extraterrestrial. My second thought, about 45 seconds later, was train.' The FAA forwarded the report to BNSF's operations center, which confirmed that the 'UFO' was train Z-CHISBD-9, a 6,800-foot intermodal service operating on schedule from Chicago to Seattle on Track 2. 'We appreciate Mr. Coupler's vigilance,' said a BNSF spokesperson. 'However, bright lights approaching on parallel tracks are a routine feature of double-track main-line railroading and have been since approximately 1870.' Coupler, a 12-year veteran, acknowledged the error but maintained that the sighting 'felt different.' 'Normally you see a train coming and you think, that's a train,' he said. 'This time I saw a train coming and I thought, that's an alien spacecraft. The fact that it was, in fact, a train does not diminish the emotional reality of the experience.' The incident has prompted BNSF to add a line to its engineer training materials: 'Bright lights on the adjacent track are almost certainly trains. Please confirm before filing with federal agencies.' Coupler has not filed any additional UFO reports, though he notes that a particularly bright switch lamp near Havre, Montana, 'looks suspicious.'