(The following story by Stu Ducklow appeared on The Hants Journal website on February 5, 2010.)
NEW MINAS, Nova Scotia — If you ever get inside the cab of a locomotive, take a look the heater panel in front of the engineer’s seat.
It sits just where the brake pedal would be in a car. And all those scuffs and dents are caused by the engineer’s boots pushing full-force against it in a useless effort to stop the locomotive before it crashes into a vehicle at a level railway crossing. A freight train, weighing up to 10,000 tons, can take up to 2 km to stop in an emergency. Normally, train crews begin braking 5 km ahead of their stops.
According to Dan Di Tota, former locomotive driver, the heater panel is abused at least once a day by every engineer in Canada as, whistle shrieking and emergency brake fully applied, another train has another close encouter at a railway crossing.
And at least once his or her career, a locomotive engineer is going to be involved in a fatality.
Di Tota says it’s only because of a career change that he’s never been involved in a fatal accident. But the Ottawa-based Canadian director of Operation Lifesaver can remember quite a few close encounters.
Like the time in Quebec when a vehicle approached a crossing and kept right on going.
“A vehicle was coming to the crossing and the gate was down, but it started speeding up as if it had no intention of stopping. We put the train in emergency. The guy went around the gate. I could see the passenger holding this baby in her arms and looking at me with her mouth open in shock.
[They were so close] “I wouldn’t have wanted to slip a hand between the car and the train.”
The vehicle crossed out of Di Tota’s line of vision and he waited for the crunch. When noting happened, “I almost collapsed. My legs just gave way.”
Another time a snowmobiler, completely oblivious, turned in front of Di Tota’s train and began using the track as his personal highway. But the train was catching up and the snowmobiler, wearing a hoodie and helmet, didn’t hear the whistle. Bystanders watched in horror as the train appeared ready to overrun the snowmobile, when it suddenly turned off at a crossing. “He had the angels with him that day,” said Di Tota. “I just collaped in my seat, shaking. It’s the feeling of helplessness.”
Near-misses are reported and the data is used to detect unsafe intersections. Rail police will patrol them and hand out tickets.
CN provides counseling for crew members as well. “It’s very important for them to talk about it. To realize it’s not their fault. That there’s nothing they can do. I know a couple of locomotive engineers who retired right then and there.
One of them quit after a spectacular accident in Manitoba. A tanker truck had been driving parallel to a freight train for several kilometers when it suddenly made a left turn right in front of them. There was nothing the crew could do. As the train smashed into the truck the engineer noticed the hazardous materials warning on the side. The tanker truck was full of gas.
“They all went down to the ground and waited for the kaboom. But no kaboom. As the train came to a stop, they heard liquid being splashed all over the locomotive and train.
“They thought they were dead. Then all they hear is dripping. Now they were afraid to touch anything or they’d be caught in an exploding oven.”
Police and fire engines roared up to the scene. Some one must have tasted the gas. It was water. The driver, who was not injured in the accident, simply hadn’t changed the hazardous materials warning.
The locomotive engineer handed in his resignation right then. “All I could think about were my kids and how I’d never see them again. I don’t need this,” he told Di Tota, one of the rail officials at the scene.
One of the least-known dangers of a car-rail collision is the possibility of derailment. If a train derails and it has danagerous goods on board, “you can wipe out a whole neighbourhood.”