(BLE Editor’s Note: Brother M.D. Gaines is a member of BLE Division 133 in Denver, Colo.)
GREELEY, Colo. — Mike Gaines keeps his hand on the train whistle and his eyes on the railroad crossing ahead of him as he runs a Union Pacific train through downtown Greeley, the Rocky Mountain News reported.
The train engineer watches for cars driving across the railroad tracks at the last minute. His train is traveling less than 20 mph, but if a car darts out in front of him, the train’s speed won’t matter. He can’t stop a loaded train in a matter of seconds.
“There one goes,” says Kelly Bennett, a conductor and part of Gaines’ crew. A pickup truck drives around the crossing gates and across the railroad tracks a few seconds before the train gets to the intersection.
Through the third week in September, there had been 10 train accidents with cars in Union Pacific’s Greeley subdivision, which stretches from Denver to Cheyenne. Last year, there were three crashes. Engineers and conductors say the dangers are part of their jobs. But they don’t get used to them.
“It’s a hard thing for us to handle,” said 45-year-old Gaines, who has been an engineer for 23 years. “You always run through the mental checklist and wonder, ‘Did I do everything right?’ You like to think you had some control over it, but you don’t.”
Gaines, a Highlands Ranch resident, is also an ordained minister and chaplain for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, a union for Colorado train engineers. Every time a train is involved in a crash, Gaines talks to the engineer and conductor involved.
“It helps to pray with them, talk with them, let them know God still loves them,” he said. “There’s always the would have, should have, could have. They think, ‘Maybe if I’d had one more piece of meatloaf for dinner, I wouldn’t have been at that crossing at that time.’ ”
There are two types of trains running through Greeley: locals, which pick up and drop off loads for companies along the railway, and freights, which travel between Denver and Cheyenne without stopping.
The locals usually carry lighter loads and don’t travel as fast.
The freights go about 50 mph through most towns. Engineers are required to blow their horns four times – two long, a short and a long – beginning a quarter of a mile before a railroad crossing.
Engineers switch on the emergency brakes if a car is too close.
But it takes a mile for a loaded train going 50 mph to come to a complete stop. That’s why engineers are adamant about motorists taking railroad crossings seriously.
“Most accidents occur where the train speed is less than 40 miles per hour,” said Ron Welch, director of train operations for Union Pacific’s Greeley subdivision. “It’s not the speed of the train that causes accidents but people who get on the track and think they can beat the train.”
In the 20 years Welch was an engineer, he was involved in 13 crashes with cars. Gaines has seen his fair share, too.
“Someday I’d like to connect the engineers with the families of those who were hurt or killed,” said Gaines, a husband and father of two. “I’d tell them the railroad isn’t a big ogre, and the crashes affect us, too. You’ve never seen the people in these crashes, but you mourn for them.”
Guerry Vaughan, who has been an engineer for four years, tells stories about kids tying down dogs to railroad tracks, semi trucks pulling out in front of him and one man who tried to jump on his train and was killed.
“The engineer has to live with it for the rest of his life that he killed someone,” he said.