Almost two years after he was nearly cut in half by a train, Truman Duncan is greeted like a celebrity at the Harris Methodist rehab center.

Doctors say they're still stunned that Duncan survived.

"Without the attitude to live that he had and the desire to live, I don't think he would have," said Dr. David Smith, a trauma surgeon. "I credit him with his own survival. Truly, he truly is the miracle man."

It was on a Sunday in June 2006 when Duncan fell from a train in Cleburne and held on tight as he dangled alongside another train.

"It was kind of like a monster pulling me down," he said.

Not able to hold on any longer, Duncan dropped under the wheels of the second train, which crushed his pelvis, a kidney and both legs. After all that, he managed to call 911 from his cell phone.

"Someone got run over by a railcar?" the operator asked Duncan during the call.

"Yes ma'am, I'm about to pass out," he replied.

"You got run over?" the operator asked.

Duncan then made a second call to his family. His nine-year-old daughter answered the call.

"She wanted to joke around and talk," he said. "And I was hurting so bad, you know. I was trying not to act like I was not hurting at all because I didn't want her to know ... I was like, 'Baby, you need to get momma on the phone.'"

At the hospital, a massive surgical team faced an almost unprecedented challenge.

"It's seeing anatomy from a direction that we don't normally see anatomy," Smith said.

After 23 surgeries in 41 days, Duncan started rehab.

"He had to learn all over again how to get in and out of bed, how to get up and down [and] take care of basic human needs with some altered anatomy," said Dr. Glenn Bixler.

But specialists say nothing altered Duncan's appetite for life or his fighting spirit.

"He was determined to fight through hard things," Bixler said

Now that Duncan's talking, he said he has been inundated with accolades from thousand of people he's inspired.

"On MySpace it took me about five hours to answer everybody," he said.

While he can't walk yet, Duncan hopes that will soon change with the help of prosthetic legs.

E-mail jbrady@wfaa.com