(The following story by Cindy Clayton appeared on The Virginian-Pilot website on February 14.)
CHESAPEAKE, Va. — The engineer on the locomotive could see the Ford Explorer down the railroad track, caught between the crossing arms and red flashing lights.
As the giant locomotive approached at 30 mph, the Ford’s driver maneuvered around the second arm and made it safely off the track where it crossed Portlock Road.
But she wasn’t home free. A police officer who had been parked beside the track turned on his blue lights and pulled her over. As the locomotive passed by, pulling four other locomotives, the officer wrote the woman a ticket for disregarding a railroad crossing signal.
She had almost stopped when the red lights began flashing, as required by law, but at the last second she drove onto the tracks and the arms dropped, the officer said later.
Now she and seven other drivers who were caught last Thursday morning could end up paying a $30 fine, plus $57 in court costs. All eight were snagged by police during a joint enforcement effort last week by the department’s traffic officers and Norfolk Southern Railway Co.
Drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians and others routinely try to beat trains. From January to November last year, 19 people were injured and one person died in 55 accidents at grade crossings across Virginia, according to the Federal Railroad Administration’s safety analysis office.
James Happel, the engineer whose job was to get the five locomotives to Suffolk last week, has seen all kinds of people on the tracks in his 16 years with the railroad.
“I’ve been fortunate, I haven’t ever hit none,” Happel said. “But you see it a lot.”
During Thursday’s crossing sweep, a police officer rode the locomotive and used a radio to tell officers in patrol cars when the train would reach each crossing. The officers near the tracks waited to see what would happen as the train approached.
Enforcement is one way to teach people to respect train crossings.
Railroad companies hope that education will help people understand the consequences of trying to beat a train.
The railroads, including Norfolk Southern, have joined with the non profit group Operation Lifesaver to teach the public about crossing safety, said Marmie Edwards, a spokeswoman for the group, based in Alexandria.
The group trains people to teach others in their communities about crossing safety. Each year, they reach hundreds of school children, truckers, driver’s education students, and sporting groups, including hunters.
“It’s a tough one,” Edwards said. “We’re trying to remind people that not only do they need to remember to be careful to look and listen as they come up to the crossing, but also there are penalties if they don’t.”
Police often are the first people called to the scene of a train accident.
Four or five years ago, a man in a motorized wheelchair tried to cross the tracks at Liberty Street, said Chester Heddlesten, the police officer who rode the locomotive last week.
Police weren’t sure what happened, but believe one of the wheels got stuck beside the rails.
They figure the man was facing away from the locomotive when he was hit.
“It pretty much launched him out of the chair,” Heddlesten said.
The man landed in a grassy area between streets and wasn’t injured. He was taken to a hospital as a precaution.
“The wheelchair was demolished, it was yards down the track,” Heddlesten said.
The man was lucky, but his collision serves as a cautionary tale.
“If his tire can get caught in there, so can a bicycle or anything,” Heddlesten said.
Hitting a pedestrian might not derail a train, but a car or other vehicle stuck on the tracks poses that threat, said Darryl Norris, trainmaster and road foreman for the company’s Norfolk Yard, Norfolk District and Richmond District.
Norris was once aboard a train that collided with a milk truck that got stuck on some tracks in Richmond. The experience was frightening, he said.
“When a car is stuck on the tracks, they’re actually jeopardizing other people,” Norris said. “There’s a possibility you could derail.”