(The following story by Sara K. Satullo in The Express-Times on May 28.)
PHILLIPSBURG, Pa. – Sunday morning railroad enthusiast Rick Glosser was underneath the black bridge on South Main Street poised to photograph an approaching Norfolk Southern train when something came into his viewfinder.
It was a man charging down the embankment, trying to beat the train. He was running from Hudson and Brainard streets when he slipped on the stones lining the track, landing face down.
He didn’t move at first. The train was about 50 feet away blowing its horn, Glosser said, and his friend was honking the horn on his car. As the man stumbled up he paused, staring at the train barreling upon him before scrambling off the tracks.
“It took all of 10 seconds but it did seem like a long time. You are saying to yourself, ‘What do you do?'” Glosser said. “There’s no way I could have gotten there quick enough. You don’t normally see someone in that predicament.”
Glosser, a member of Phillipsburg Railroad Historians, spends two days a week under the bridge tinkering at the group’s engine house, watching trains and taking pictures. The area is a hot spot for rail trespassers, especially ATV and dirt bike riders; he said he has given up lecturing them.
Last fall town resident John Gibbons was seriously injured when he was hit by a train as he was riding a dirt bike on the tracks in the same place. About every two years there is a fatality or a severe injury along that stretch of track, Glosser said, rattling off other incidents, some of which he has witnessed.
Glosser decided to share the photos in hopes of preventing future ones.
“They don’t see the dangers. That sequence of photos should wake somebody up. It got to me,” he said, pointing to the photo where the man is staring at the train. “He wasn’t drunk or anything, he just took a stupid chance.”
Glosser said he doesn’t know the man by name but they often exchanged greetings. He suspects he lives along the tracks since he frequently cuts across.
Norfolk Southern requires its trains to report near misses, spokesman Rudy Husband said. Reached after hours Tuesday, Husband was unable to provide information on the Sunday incident. Nothing was filed with Phillipsburg police. The train company employs police officers to patrol its tracks.
Glosser said unless officers sit there all day, it’s impossible to catch all the trespassers. He considers the unknown man very lucky that he didn’t injure himself.
“There’s no way that train could have stopped,” he said. “These trains can’t stop on a dime.”
Glosser suspects the eastbound train had slowed down when it came across the Delaware River from Easton and it was actually going below the set track speed or the outcome would have been tragic.
“The most you are going to wait is two or three minutes for a train to pass,” he said. “What was so important in life that you couldn’t wait for that?”
Reporter Sara K. Satullo can be reached at 908-475-2174 or by e-mail at ssatullo@express-times.com.