(The following story by Matt Canham appeared on The Salt Lake Tribune website on June 4.)
PROVO, Utah — An immaculate silver train car that looks straight out of the 1940s, buttressed by two grimy Union Pacific engines, attracted a gathering of mothers and their small children near the small Amtrak station here Thursday afternoon.
The locomotive also attracted police — but for a different reason.
The three-car train chugged back and forth along a one-mile stretch of rail at about 15 mph for a couple of hours, allowing officers to target motorists and pedestrians who ignore the railroad cross arms and flashing red lights.
The valleywide enforcement campaign is an annual event for Operation Lifesaver, a nonprofit group that teaches railway safety. The Lifesaver train stopped in Nephi, Provo and American Fork on Thursday and is scheduled to hit Murray, Roy and Tremonton today.
Train accidents are not a daily occurrence but they rack up each year, according to Bret Barney, Utah’s Operation Lifesaver coordinator.
In 2003, 19 collisions between a train and a car injured six people. And in the first two months of 2004, three train accidents injured five.
As the Lifesaver train passed recycling yards, new apartment buildings and the large “Hide and Fur” sign painted on the side of Inland Development Co., Ray Ipson, a Union Pacific conductor, explained his frustration with impatient motorists who go around the cross arms.
“It’s not that laid back, relaxed mode any more,” said Ipson, between the loud wail of the incessant horn. “It’s just hurry, hurry, hurry.”
And what bugs him more than anything is the minivans packed with children that cross the path of a moving train.
“They think the train can stop on a dime. A 12,000 ton coal train can’t stop on a dime,” said Ipson, who in 23 years as a conductor has never hit a pedestrian or a car, but has come close.
Provo officer Dan Stowe has responded to four train fatalities on that stretch of track during his 25-year career — two involving pedestrians and two involving motorists.
“People don’t understand about trains. They think it is like their car,” he said. “But trains can’t turn and they can’t stop quickly.”
He recalls the case of a woman in her 20s who would jog between the tracks on her lunch hour. Listening to a portable radio, she didn’t hear the train behind her. She turned her head just before impact.
During the event Thursday, a woman darted through the intersection even with the red lights announcing the approaching locomotive. A teenager on a bike didn’t think twice about riding in front of the train and a red passenger car slowed down before the driver decided to gun it around the cross arms.
All are examples of what not to do, says Barney, who urges the public to always expect a train is coming and to realize it is usually impossible to gauge what speed a train is traveling.