(The following column by Mike Seate appeared on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review website on October 18.)
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Though I live a good quarter-mile from the Norfolk Southern train tracks running adjacent to Ohio River Boulevard, you would never know it.
The frequent freight trains that chug down the line do so with as much noise as the Normandy invasion. At times, it’s impossible to continue a phone conversation when the trains pass — and that’s before the engineers let loose with long, repeated blasts from their horns.
I have been awakened at night by the dull, ominous sound of train horns and wondered why they’re necessary. After all, aren’t people smart enough to keep clear of railroad crossings when one of those roaring behemoths approaches?
I’m not so sure any longer.
Last week, while I was waiting for the traffic signals to change at the intersection of River Road and Ohio River Boulevard in Haysville, the railroad crossing activated as a big, black locomotive bore down on the intersection from the east. Two red and white striped crossing gates lowered to block the train tracks, bolstered by several red, flashing lights.
The train was only a few hundred yards from the crossing when a battered pick-up truck charged around one of the crossing gates directly into the train’s path. It was one of those moments of sheer disbelief in which my brain couldn’t quite process what my eyes were taking in.
Worse yet, for a moment the primer-colored truck faltered on the tracks, the driver either stalled or stuck in place with fear. With about four car lengths to spare, the pick-up truck driver lurched out of danger.
After the train passed, the driver and his passengers — dead ringers for country-fried comedian Larry The Cable Guy — exited the vehicle and exchanged triumphant high-fives.
I was having a hard time believing what I’d just seen, but to Ohio Township police chief Norbert Micklos, what I’d witnessed was not that uncommon.
“I’ve been chief here for 10 years and I hate to say it,” Micklos said. “But people, for some reason, cross those tracks all the time.”
The chief said vehicles have been struck by trains at this intersection in the past, but the most common human-train interactions involve people walking along the tracks and being struck by trains.
“At the crossing a little ways down the road in Emsworth, you have all kinds of people at night — lovers, drinkers, you name it — crossing in front of trains. It’s a really dangerous thing to do,” he warned.
This was supposed to be a less common problem after the Federal Railroad Administration adopted new rules requiring conductors to sound their horns at each and every at-grade crossing. But since that measure went into effect in June 2005, Micklos said locals seem unaffected by the warnings.
“‘I don’t understand it,” he said.
After seeing it happen, neither do I.