STEELE CITY, Neb. — There hadn’t been a car-train crash in nearly 20 years at the crossing on Steele City’s north edge before four women died there Monday night, the Omaha World-Herald reports.
But three times as many Union Pacific trains rumble through the town, going to and coming from Wyoming’s coal-rich Powder River Basin, as did when the Curtis Street crossing saw its last crash – the meeting of a train and a stalled, unoccupied car – on April 30, 1983.
The 63 trains per day, some running on a second track opened in 2000, account for the major change since then at Steele City’s two crossings, according to U.P. and Federal Railroad Administration records.
Motorists approaching the Curtis Street crossing rely on the same basic warning system – two pairs of crossbucks and stop signs – as they did 20 years ago.
The other crossing, a couple of blocks south on Main Street, has had crossarms and warning lights since at least 1977.
But officials said signals at Curtis Street might not have prevented Monday night’s crash, in which an empty coal train approached Main Street from the south before the car with the women in it started to cross.
“With the bells and lights going on the other (crossing), I don’t know why they couldn’t tell the train was coming, especially in the dark,” said Dennis Rhine, an assistant Jefferson County highway superintendent. He was at the scene as a rescue worker.
The deaths matched Nebraska’s total in car-train crashes for all of 2001, according to the State Office of Highway Safety.
But fatalities at Nebraska’s 6,559 railroad crossings have tumbled since 1991, when 23 people died in car-train wrecks. Abandoned routes, signal upgrades at some crossings and closings of many others all have helped to reduce the totals.
But statistics show that crossings with signals were equally likely to have car-train crashes as those without, said Office of Highway Safety Administrator Fred Zwonechek.
It also isn’t cost-effective to put signals at every crossing, said Shelly Harshaw of North Platte, Nebraska state coordinator for Operation Lifesaver. Her group stresses educating motorists to stop, look and listen at every crossing.
“It’s a frustrating and helpless feeling from our perspective,” said Harshaw.
Federal Railroad Administration records show that the Curtis Street crossing had three car-train accidents between 1979 and 1983, but no one was hurt.
A train hit a moving motorcycle at the Main Street crossing in 1975, but the rider wasn’t on the motorcycle. A train struck an unoccupied hay trailer at rest in the crossing in October 2000, after the second track opened.