(The following story by Tommy Witherspoon appeared on the Tribune-Herald website on March 23.)
WACO, Texas — Trains parked adjacent to State Highway 6, some often abandoned without crews, have caused R.D. and Laverna Pursche a lot of frustration over the past three decades.
On Wednesday morning, R.D. Pursche repeated a maddening routine that has become all too familiar for the residents of Circle P Lane just west of Riesel – he waited 45 minutes for a crew from the Union Pacific Railroad to unblock his avenue to the rest of the world.
The latest train to block Highway 6 came 18 hours after Pursche and his wife were scheduled to testify in the trial of the railroad being cited for obstructing a railroad crossing with a train.
The case, while unusual, is not the first of its kind for McLennan County. Police and sheriff’s office officials have cited railways for blocking crossings in Riesel and Lorena in the past few years. Those cases were resolved without trials, including the one in Riesel, where the charge was dismissed after railroad officials promised to be more diligent in keeping crossings clear.
For the Pursches, the latest charge gives them hope of relief.
“It goes back 30 years,” said Pursche, a retired grocery chain manager. “We have been fighting this thing 30 years. Once, a train was parked there at 10 at night and it was still there at 7 the next morning. It was unattended and I couldn’t get across until 8 a.m. I had to call someone else to open the store.”
Marc Scott, a rancher who leases land from the Pursches, has missed picking his children up from school because of a train blocking the road. And as a member of the Hallsburg Volunteer Fire Department, he also worries about access being cut off to certain areas in case of grass fires or other emergencies.
For example, Scott says, a nearby motorcycle race track on Highway 6 has an ambulance standing by in case of accidents. However, if a train were parked there, the ambulance would be unable to get to a hospital until the train moved or disconnected the cars.
“We really worry in case of emergency,” Laverna Pursche said. “We are in our middle 70s, and you know, anything can happen. He’s a diabetic and our neighbor is a heart patient. If the house catches on fire, they can’t get to it.”
Joe Arbona, Union Pacific’s regional public affairs director, said the railroad never tries to stop in one place for more than 10 minutes. However, sometimes matters beyond a crew’s control, like an air brake hose malfunction, require the crew to stop for extended periods to make repairs.
“We certainly want to be a good corporate citizen,” Arbona said. “We work to reduce any kind of inconvenience like that. One of the key things for our railroad is fluidity. When they stop and block the road, it is not a good thing.”
Arbona said the railroad urges motorists to call (888) 877-7267 when a train is blocking a crossing for more than 10 minutes.
“That way, we can take action and contact the crew and find out why it is not moving and make arrangements to cut the train,” Arbona said. “Union Pacific does not intentionally block crossings.”
But R.D. Pursche and his seven or so neighbors who live on Circle P Lane wonder. After calling railroad offices in Houston, Kansas City and other locations over the years, Pursche said the problem has not gotten any better.
“I came home one day and they had uncoupled one car right at my driveway,” he said. “I could not get in. It looked like they did it on purpose. It would almost have had to have been done on purpose.”
McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch said one of his deputies cited Union Pacific in the pending case because it blocked the crossing for five hours and the crew left the train unattended.
“We cannot let this continue to happen,” Lynch said. “At some point, these folks, many of whom are elderly, are going to need some medical attention and we aren’t going to be able to get any help to them. What about all these grass fires? How will we be able to get there and fight them?”
Arbona declined to discuss the pending case, which was set to be tried Tuesday in Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Belinda Summer’s court in Mart.
However, Matt Durham, an attorney for the railroad, said he was prepared to argue that federal law trumps state law in this situation.
“State law says one thing, which prohibits blocking a railroad crossing for more than 10 minutes,” he said. “The federal courts have come down and said that statute is unconstitutional because it is the complete purview of the federal government to regulate railroads.”
Durham initially requested that the case be transferred to one of the county’s courts-at-law because they are courts of record, which, unlike justice courts, provide transcripts for appeals.
He later changed his mind, but Summers decided to find another judge to hear the case.
The railroad faces a fine of up to $300 if convicted. A new trial date and court have not been scheduled.