(The following story by Megha Satyanarayana appeared on the Detroit Free Press website on July 11, 2009. John Karakian is General Chairman of the BLET’s Grand Trunk Western General Committee of Adjustment. John Tolman is Vice President & National Legislative Representative.
DETROIT — On a New Year’s Eve two decades ago, a woman driving a car with two babies shot across the railroad tracks in front of Novi engineer John Karakian’s train, disappearing on the other side.
He was barreling downhill toward Pontiac at night when the car flashed across the engine’s headlight on the track ahead of him.
Even with 20 years between him and those few seconds, the local chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen’s voice tensed and wobbled as he talked.
“The two little kids looked right at me, but she never turned,” he said of the driver. Had he hit them, he said, “I might have had a stroke on the spot.”
Most engineers live Karakian’s experience multiple times in a career — harrowing moments of fear and anticipation when a car or a person decides to cross train tracks, ignoring the warnings that scream a train is coming.
“You never forget it. You’re pushing your feet through the floorboard, trying to stop the train,” he said.
At the scene of Thursday’s collision between an Amtrak train and a car full of young people, the company relieved the engineers and conductors at their request, said spokesman Marc Magliari. It’s part of Amtrak’s crisis response to aid shell-shocked operators who can have little recourse when someone is on the tracks.
Train crews often experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, they were expected to continue as if nothing had happened,” said BLET national spokesman John Bentley.
No amount of training can help an engineer predict what someone at a crossing will do, said John Tolman, national legislative representative for BLET who has helped push for legislation that will require most railroad companies to do something similar to Amtrak’s response.
After dealing with that uncertainty several times, engineer John Houghton of Hazel Park sometimes crushes a can with his 330-pound frame for trainees at Norfolk Southern railway. “This is what you’re going to expect when you walk to that car,” he warns them.