It’s a helpless feeling, hitting an animal with a train.

Coming around a corner and seeing an animal with its head down on the tracks, Jim Atkinson, a retired locomotive engineer, says he would do everything he could to try to save its life.

Sometimes it worked; other times it didn’t.

“My natural instinct is to turn that bright headlight off and start blowing on the whistle,” he said. WATCH | Bears on the tracks:

Train approaches bear September 11, 2017 | Duration 0:14 A camera the locomotive of a CP train captures a bear on the tracks

Atkinson started with Canadian National (CN) in 1974 and spent most of his career on a route from Jasper, Alta., to Blue River, B.C., where he would see all sorts of wildlife, including elk, deer and bears. Over the years, the animals he hi

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