(The following story by Justin Much appeared on the Statesman Journal website on September 7. Brother Dean Dahlin is a member of BLET Division 892 in Seattle.)
SALEM, Ore. — A group of idlers hanging out on the porch of a North Salem duplex flipped the bird at the Union Pacific locomotive as it traveled south between Market and D streets in Salem Thursday morning.
A short hop later, the train crushed a couple of handfuls of rocks placed on the tracks less than 20 yards from D Street. The conductor, Bob Manning, shook his head and shrugged; he has seen it all before — and worse.
Thursday’s train ride was part of Operation Lifesaver, a program that visited Eugene on Wednesday, Salem on Thursday and will be in Portland today giving free rides. Its purpose is to raise awareness of conditions involving the mix of trains, traffic and pedestrians.
Four pedestrians near the State Street crossing learned the safety lesson twice: first, when Salem police answered their questions about the event’s purpose; and second, a short time later when police issued $97 citations to each of the four as they ignored crossbars and lights to jump over the tracks with the train approaching.
“That’s where we’re frustrated,” Union Pacific engineer Dean Dahlin said. “We go into schools (to educate about train safety), and then you still see things like that. I had a kid who died on a trestle (near Centralia, Wash.) when he was walking across it. An Amtrak train came, he started running and didn’t make it. I talked to his class the year before and had talked to another class at the school just two days before.”
Conductors, engineers and train crews hope their safety campaigns, including Operation Lifesaver, will emphasize not only the dangers posed at rail crossings, but the frustration and stress involved from their standpoint. An average train requires about a half mile to stop when traveling 30 mph (roughly the speed they travel through most municipalities); it requires more than a mile at 60 mph.
In more than 30 years with the railroad, Dahlin has been in the locomotive eight times when impact has occurred. His cohort, 37-year railroad veteran Greg (Boomer) Boam, has been involved in 18 incidents with cars and eight with pedestrians.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is the impact an accident has on the train crew and people on board,” Boam said. “When something like that happens, the conductor is the first responder, and a lot of the times you don’t do anything but wait for the coroner.”
For every mishap, there are scores of close calls and potentially tense moments.
“You see the darndest things sometimes,” Dahlin said. “You see parents strap their kids in car seats, then they drive around cross bars. I saw one lady in Eugene, with a train stopped on the tracks, push a stroller with her kid in it under the train.”
Those potentially disastrous situations are constantly at the forefront of a conductor’s mind.
Engineer Grant Goodell, who works primarily between Portland and Eugene, said at times when there are strings of fatalities, the job becomes especially stressful.
“It’s unbelievable the amount of fatalities we’ve had from trespassing (on tracks) this past year,” Goodell said. “We had six incidents between Canby and Portland in about three months, five fatal. It’s just been one after the other.
“You know that there is nothing you can do about it. You have no control, but that doesn’t make it any easier.”