(The following story by Tim Doulin appeared on the Columbus Dispatch website on August 5.)
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The gates to halt traffic came down as the train rolled down the track toward the crossing on Fairwood Avenue at Refugee Road.
That didn’t stop a black Jaguar from whipping around the gates to beat the train to the crossing.
“We got one going through the gate!” the engineer said over the radio.
A police cruiser shadowing the Ohio Operation Lifesaver Enforcement train was unable to catch up with the Jaguar. But law enforcement officers nabbed three similar violators yesterday during the ride on the Norfolk Southern line from Delaware to Chillicothe.
“This is just a snippet of time on one piece of track where you saw one incident,” said Shel Senek, state coordinator of Ohio Operation Lifesaver, a national nonprofit public-safety education organization.
“Just compound that by 6,100 crossings in Ohio. It happens way too frequently.”
The organization fears there may be more close calls, or worse, in the future.
In March, Norfolk Southern opened a double-stack container plant at Rickenbacker Airport. That means increased rail traffic on the corridor that runs from Bellevue on the Sandusky-Huron County line to South Point on the Ohio River.
Norfolk already has added two more trains to the 25 to 30 a day that travel the line. In three years, eight to 10 more trains are expected to travel the route.
Operation Lifesaver The organization is stepping up education along the way to alert motorists, schoolchildren and anyone who will listen. Yesterday’s trip was for the news media to observe the potential hazards at crossings.
None of yesterday’s incidents resulted in a crash, but the state is in the Top 10 in the nation in deaths involving trains at crossings and along the rails. It is fourth in the number of rail carloads handled.
Trains traveling 55 mph or faster can need a mile or more to stop, Senek said.
Michael Lynn, Norfolk Southern train master, knows what it’s like to operate a train at high speed and see a vehicle or pedestrian on the track.
“Your gut wrenches up right away,” said Lynn, a former train engineer. “The quick reaction is you put your hand on the emergency-brake valve. Are they going to get out of the way, or are they going to stay right where they are at?”
Lynn said he was involved in four crashes with vehicles; in three, the motorist was killed.
“You hit the brake to try to get the train stopped, knowing darn well you’re not going to,” he said. “It’s a helpless feeling, too.”
From 2003 to 2007, 55 people were killed and 185 injured in 581 crossing crashes in Ohio, according to Operation Lifesaver.
In the past 10 years, people struck by trains walking along or standing on the rails have become a bigger problem than crashes at crossings, Senek said.
Ohio typically has 25 to 30 such fatalities involving so-called “trespassers” in a year, according to Jim Sturm, president of Ohio Operation Lifesaver and a former Norfolk Southern police officer.