(The following story by Jon Schmitz appeared on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website on April 15, 2010. J.J. Trimble is a member of BLET Division 335 in Elrama, Pa.)
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Jimmy Trimble loosed four blasts of the whistle on his Norfolk Southern locomotive as it rumbled toward a crossing at The Waterfront in Homestead.
As the train continued south on its way to Brownsville, Mr. Trimble was on the horn again and again, repeating the federally mandated cadence: long blast, long blast, short blast, long blast.
Nearly 50 times the train rolled through crossings in towns like New Eagle, Monongahela and Roscoe, where trucks, cars and pedestrians cross paths with trains every day.
That’s 50 opportunities for recklessness and disaster.
Vehicles collided with trains 1,880 times in the U.S. last year, with 248 killed. In Pennsylvania, it happened 46 times with one fatality.
“In my opinion, that’s still one too many,” said Jack Hubbard, state coordinator of Operation Lifesaver, a campaign to raise awareness about the dangers inherent at the state’s 4,200 at-grade railroad crossings.
Mr. Hubbard and officials of Norfolk Southern, which hauls 35 million tons of coal out of the Mon Valley in a typical year, hosted a 120-mile roundtrip for state and local officials on Wednesday. The train pulled two 1949-vintage passenger coaches that were equipped with TV monitors showing an engineer’s-eye view.
Even at 40 mph, grade crossings seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye. On this day, no one tempted fate by crossing in front of the train — a good thing, because by the time a crossing is in sight, it’s usually too late for the train to stop.
A loaded train doing 55 mph needs more than a mile to come to a halt — maybe a bit less if it’s pushing a sedan down the tracks.
Carl K. Hvozda of Homer City, one of about 70 volunteers who do presentations on railroad safety at schools, senior citizens centers and other places around the state as part of Operation Lifesaver, recalled an incident of derring-do that his group wants to discourage.
He was third in line at a crossing where the lights and gate were activated, and a motorist pulled out from behind him, went around the gates and crossed the tracks.
Asked if he’d seen any close calls while riding trains, Mr. Hvozda said “if I can see [the driver] and he crosses, that’s a near-miss.”
Operation Lifesaver, founded in 1972, can toot this success: Since its birth, the number of collisions between vehicles and trains has fallen from about 12,000 per year to last year’s 1,880 — an 84 percent decline.
A bigger present-day problem, however, is trespassers. Last year, 434 were killed in the U.S. while walking on or near railroad lines, 29 of them in Pennsylvania.