(The following story by Richard Payerchin appeared on the Morning Journal website on June 11, 2009.)
ELYRIA, Ohio — Drivers and walkers take note: Stay out of the way of trains.
Operation Lifesaver rolled through northern Ohio yesterday to spread the message of railroad safety. The non-profit education program is sponsored by the nation’s train companies, federal transportation regulators and law enforcement groups.
Car-train crashes are easily preventable and usually tragic, said Shel Senek, Ohio coordinator for Operation Lifesaver.
“When you meet a train, you lose every time,” Senek said. “That’s just the problem. You have no contest.”
The message is simple and worth repeating.
Don’t try to beat the train at railroad crossings.
Don’t trespass on railroad tracks.
Two black Norfolk Southern locomotives pulled two maroon 1949 Powhatan Arrow passenger cars from Cleveland to Sandusky and back yesterday. Police, community leaders, school officials and reporters watched television screens connected to cameras mounted on the engines. The passengers could see the engineer’s point of view riding the rails.
Highway Patrol troopers rode along to cite violators as law officers stood by the grade crossings.
The officials saw no violations, but one driver was cautioned when the vehicle crossed the tracks at Vermilion Road as the train approached and the warning gates started coming down. The driver did not try to beat the train but had bad timing, Vermilion police Chief Robert Kish said.
Railroad officers yesterday also found a trespasser west of Sandusky, the terminus of the safety trip.
On board, many had their own stories about people who thought they could beat trains but were wrong.
Lorain County Sheriff Phil Stammitti recounted his days as a patrol officer in Lorain, where he responded to a man who tried to beat a train but slipped on the tracks and was killed.
“Be safety conscious,” Stammitti said. “Let the train go by and you’ll get to where you’re going safely. So you’ve got to wait another moment for a train to go by a crossing. Nobody’s in that big a hurry.”
Last year, there were 2,373 highway-rail incidents at public and private crossings, resulting in 286 fatalities and 913 injuries.
Among the 50 states, Ohio ranks fourth in rail traffic, seventh for grade crossing crashes, eighth in grade crossing fatalities and 12th in pedestrian trespass incidents.
In 2007, 68 percent of Ohio’s railroad crossing crashes happened at locations where the lights, and sometimes lights and gates, were operating at the time of the crash. “That’s phenomenal,” Senek said.
The northern Ohio stretch of tracks was selected because of a high rate of trespassing along it, Senek said. Some people view the railroad rights-of-way as a long, skinny park where they can hike, hunt or ride all terrain vehicles, he said.
“Trespassing is a big issue,” Senek said. “This is a corridor where we’ve had a history of violations.”
Trains cannot stop quickly in a short distance. A loaded freight train, with two locomotives and 100 cars, weighs 6,000 tons, which is 12 million pounds, Senek said. The weight ratio of that train to the average car is 4,000 to one, he said.
“A soda can is to a car as a car is to a train, 4,000 to one,” Senek said.
That load takes the length of 18 football fields, or more than a mile, to slow from 55 mph to zero.
The hazard should be obvious to drivers and pedestrians, but the crashes continue. Joe Dunn, a Vermilion resident and railroad inspector for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, said he’s seen “more than I’d like to count.”
“None of them are any good,” he said, “and unfortunately, most of them end up in fatalities.”