PHILADELPHIA — You won’t hear the rumble and grumble of a diesel locomotive. You won’t hear the clickety-clack sound of wheels on gaps in the rail. If you’re lucky, you might hear a horn, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.
All you’ll probably hear is a hiss.
That’s the sound generated by a 4,000 ton, state-of-the-art, Amtrak Acela Express train moving over an electrified, continuous rail track at 100 mph.
And if you happen to be standing on that track when the hiss rises from the rail, it will probably be the last thing you hear.
No one knows how much warning the three Bucks County teen-agers had when they were struck and killed Sunday afternoon near Morrisville by the Washington, D.C.-bound Acela Express Train No. 2253.
Toxicology tests for drugs and alcohol are pending for the victims.
But experts said that even on a clear day with good visibility, it is nearly impossible to avoid becoming a statistic if you wander onto the rails in the path of a speeding train.
“The sheer size and mass of a train is deceptive to our senses,” according to Warren Flatau, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration.
“Most of the research indicates that it is basically impossible for the average person, even a superhuman, to accurately judge the speed and distance of an oncoming train.” Judging which set of tracks a train is on is equally difficult, he said.
The Railroad Administration’s grim statistics bear this out.
Nationwide, nearly 1,000 people a year are killed by trains. Roughly half of that number are killed trespassing on the tracks; the other half die attempting to cross at railway gates, usually in vehicles.
In Pennsylvania this year alone, at least 21 people have been killed trespassing on the rails, including the three Bucks teen-agers. The Philadelphia area accounts for 11 of the fatalities, according to FRA statistics.
There’s are also the sheer physics involved in stopping a speeding locomotive.
An eight-car train traveling at 70 mph will take more than a mile to come to a stop. The Acela Express train that struck the teens on Sunday was traveling 100 mph and did not come to a stop until nearly 1.5 miles after the brakes were applied.
“The reality of a train is that you just can’t stop it – it can’t go around you,” said Amtrak spokeswoman Cecilia Cummings.
Falls Township Police Chief Neil Harkins said the rail at the accident site has a slight bend before coming to a trestle.
“It probably made it a little more difficult for the engineer to see someone in front of him,” said Harkins.
The train’s speed was within the limit allowed for that portion of the Northeast Corridor, said Cummings. She said all Amtrak trains travel that portion of the rail – the two inner tracks of the four tracks on the rail bed – at that speed.
Much of the Northeast Corridor features a welded rail line – meaning the track is one continuous band of metal as opposed to sections of track laid end to end.
The redesign was necessary to accomodate the higher speeds and smoother ride touted by the Acela trains, which can reach up to 150 mph in brief stretches of the New York to Boston run and 135 mph between Washington, D.C., and New York.
Cummings said the high-speed train creates a “hissing” sound as it passes over the welded rails, something that might be foreign to people accustomed to the rumble of an older locomotive on a traditional track.
But speed and stealth are not the critical factors in the reason three teen-agers died Sunday.
“Maybe they’re a little bit faster and a little bit quieter, but these kids don’t belong there,” said Matthew Mitchell, head of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, a commuter advocacy group. “We’re going to continue to have this problem until people, including law enforcement, treat trespassing on the railroad the same way as walking down the middle of I-95.”
Mitchell said he also sees mothers and fathers climbing over fences between the rails every night at SEPTA’s Glenside rail station, just to save a few steps walk to the parking lot.
Whether it’s the law of physics, parental and police oversight or just the invincibility of a group of teen-agers, eventually something bad happens, like Sunday.
And that’s when it hits you.