(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution posted the following article by Steve Visser on its website on September 28. Steve Lurie is a member of BLET Division 696 in Atlanta.)
ATLANTA — Railroad engineer Steve Lurie knows the look of a driver who sees a train coming and realizes he is about to die.
“When you look in somebody’s eyes and they know they’re fixing to get hit, it really hurts,” he said. “It is a real creepy feeling.”
Lurie has driven trains for 36 years. His trains have collided with vehicles that tried to cross the tracks as his train was coming. Nobody died in those collisons, but he once ran over and killed a drunken man sleeping on the track.
“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “In all these years, I’ve only killed one person. Some engineers have killed several.”
On Wednesday, his Norfolk Southern engine was pulling two passenger cars from Duluth to Toccoa that carried public safety, railroad and city officials on a trip sponsored by Operation Lifesaver-Georgia, a nonprofit group that educates drivers on the importance of stopping at rail crossings.
“Today, fortunately, we didn’t have a crash,” said Jennie Glasgow, state coordinator for the group. “Last year in North Carolina, this same train hit a tractor-trailer.”
Law officers in Duluth, Flowery Branch and Oakwood took extra steps Wednesday to avoid a similar collision. They placed patrol cars at each rail crossing to ensure Operation Lifesaver’s train passed safely.
“Nobody wants to be the town where they hit a Lifesaver train,” said Andrew Durden, a volunteer at the Southeastern Railroad Museum in Duluth who made the trip.
But each year trains collide with thousands of automobiles nationwide. In Georgia, Fulton, Chatham, Ware, Cobb, Gwinnett and DeKalb counties lead the state in such crashes, according to Federal Railroad Administration figures.
Gwinnett recorded 24 collisons between vehicles and trains 2000-2005. Two people died and five were injured, according to Operation Lifesaver.
Fulton recorded the highest numbers, with 91 collisions, four deaths and 12 injuries. DeKalb had 24 collisions, one death and seven injuries. Cobb had 26 collisions and two injuries.
During that same period, 10 pedestrians were killed by trains in Fulton, six were killed in Gwinnett, four were killed in Cobb and three were killed in DeKalb, according to Operation Lifesaver.
Trains overhang the track by three feet, which mean they can clip a pedestrian who thinks he is safe, Glasgow said. And a 100-car train can weigh 6,000 tons and at 55 mph take more than a mile to stop, according to Glasgow’s figures.
“We go maximum speed over all these grade crossing — it is up to the public to stop,” said Rick Collins, a foreman for Norfolk Southern.”
Those trains could be hauling anything from coal and automobiles to hydrogen chloride, which is more dangerous than chlorine, Collins said.
Chlorine is what the Norfolk Southern train was carrying Jan. 6, 2005, when it hit another train in Graniteville, S.C. The released gas killed nine people, sent 550 to hospitals and forced the evacuation of 5,400 people.
That accident was blamed on a misaligned switch for the track. But in car-train accidents, the train always has the right of way and the majority of accidents occur at crossing with gates and lights, Collins said.
Drivers either aren’t paying attention or believe the train is traveling slowly when it actually is coming fast, Lurie said.
Years ago, Lurie saw one of those situations almost lead to calamity in Buford. He was steering a passenger train when he saw gasoline truck start creeping across the tracks.
He started blowing the horn. The truck didn’t speed up.
The train barely missed it.
“I thought I was dead,” he said. “I only hoped that I could get through the crash before the truck exploded.”