(The following story by Samar Fay of the Glasgow Courier appeared on the Billings Gazette website on March 5.)
BILLINGS, Mont. — Like many Hi-Line towns, Wolf Point grew up divided by a double line of railroad tracks. Schools and fast food places, grocery stores and homes, bars and businesses are separated by the rails that carry 25 to 30 trains a day.
One critical stretch runs right through the middle of town, between Third and Sixth avenues, off U.S. Highway 2. Pedestrians sometimes take a shortcut across the tracks, rather than go to a safe, nearby underpass or to a level crossing with signals.
Such shortcuts have killed 10 people in the past 10 years in Wolf Point. The most recent case was in 2002 when two men were hit by a freight train at about 2 a.m.
To study ways of cutting down on the number of deaths, a group called Good Neighbors: Partners for Safety was organized in Wolf Point last year by the Rev. Jerry Swanson, a local pastor whose stepson was killed by a train in Wolf Point in 1998.
The group has met monthly since August. Among its members are a police captain, the chief of staff of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, a school safety coordinator, the owner of a business near the tracks, a county commissioner, a highway department supervisor and a retired school counselor.
“We’re trying to be an all-encompassing group to help the community,” said the group’s president, Steve Henderson, principal of North Side Middle School.
They planned a training session this week with the national volunteer group Operation Life Savers. Richard Flink, of Whitefish, is the group’s volunteer state coordinator in Montana. He is a 35-year veteran of the railroad, beginning by building track and working up through brakeman, conductor and engineer to his present position, regional manager of field safety support for Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
Flink authored the certification training program that he teaches to parents, police officers, railroad buffs, etc. He conducted a program in Wolf Point three years ago, but the group did not complete its certification. He expects to certify the class this time.
He doesn’t put much stock in fences to solve the problem. His priority is to get through to teenagers in driver’s education classes that it’s dumb and dangerous to drive in front of a train.
The Wolf Point Good Neighbors group is sponsoring safety poster contests for children and adults and is considering hiring Seattle muralist Don Barrie to decorate a fence wall. Kids would help the artist with the work so that they would take ownership of the mural and be proud of it.
Safety proposals have included an automatic horn system, a new fence between the underpass and level crossing, public education and slower train speed through town.
“I’ve seen kids playing chicken on the tracks. We have kids put pennies on the track. It’s a matter of time before some kid slips or trips,” Henderson said.
The situation concerns railroad officials as much as it does local residents.
“It’s rolling death out here,” said Stephen Reinke. “Steel on steel, you can’t hear it.”
Reinke is the superintendent of operations for the BNSF Railway between Whitefish and Minot, and from Sweetgrass on the Canadian border south to Laurel. A brakeman for 10 years and a former train dispatcher, he is highly aware of all aspects of safety on the railroad.
Recently, he and Glasgow trainmaster Daniel McCaslin took local newspaper editors and Jerry Swanson on a train ride from Glasgow to Poplar and back. The train paused in Poplar so Swanson could tape a safety spot with Reinke for TV station WUMV in Williston, N.D.
Before mounting the high metal steps into the locomotive, guests were given gloves and safety goggles, and told to keep three points of contact up the steps.
Two massive 4,400 horsepower GE locomotives weighing 415,000 pounds each were joined back-to-back for this trip, an odd-looking arrangement but efficient for going in two directions without a turnaround. It was an officer’s special, given the highest priority on the line by the dispatcher in Ft. Worth, Texas.
The hardest train to stop is a loaded grain train, he said. Weighing 15,000 tons, it takes up to two miles to stop. Amtrak, a smaller, lighter train that travels at 79 mph, is the quickest to stop, but it still requires nearly two miles. There is no such thing as avoiding someone on the track.
Johnson said the fence behind the school at Wolf Point has helped in making people go through the crossing. Hicks said the worst times of day for kids trespassing are at lunchtime and after school.
“Five minutes, that’s not very long to wait for a train,” Johnson said.