Norfolk engineer takes train on safety tour

NORFOLK

Dan Jackson has been a locomotive engineer since 1979.

"Knock on wood, I've done this 30 years and never killed anyone," he said.

"I've hit people in cars, hit people on bicycles. I've actually hit people - I just grazed them, knocked them out of the way."

Jackson, however, is a rarity among his peers.

"The vast majority of engineers driving a train as long as I've been have been involved in fatalities," he said.

His father, who was also an engineer, was involved in incidents that left eight people dead during his career.

On Wednesday, Jackson, who works for Norfolk Southern, was at the controls of a two-car passenger train that carried about 85 people to Petersburg and back - many of them law enforcement, emergency management and other public-safety officials. All were invited to learn more about the need to educate people about railroad safety.

The trip was sponsored by Norfolk Southern and Operation Lifesaver, a 37-year-old nonprofit group committed to ending collisions, deaths and injuries at rail crossings or on railroad tracks.

It's a serious problem.

Nationwide, 286 people were killed last year in collisions at highway crossings and 913 were injured, according to Operation Lifesaver, citing Federal Railroad Administration data.

Another 458 people were killed while trespassing on train tracks or other railroad property, and 426 were injured.

Four of the grade-crossing fatalities and four of those killed on train tracks or other rail property were in Virginia - for a total of eight dead, records show.

Virginia ranks in the middle of all 50 states - at No. 25 - for highway-rail incidents, casualties and trespass casualties, according to the data.

"That's where we've been for several years," said Raiford Wilson, a Norfolk Southern engineer for 22 years who also works as a trainer for Operation Lifesaver and who was aboard the Norfolk Southern train to Petersburg on Wednesday.

Within minutes of the train's departure from the railroad's Lamberts Point terminal, a motorist at a local highway crossing drove around the gates. Passengers were able to watch on a closed-circuit TV screen in the coach section, courtesy of a camera mounted on the front of the locomotive enabling them to see what the engineer sees.

Wilson said he's accustomed to watching an incident like that at least once on virtually every run he makes.

"It's almost a given," he said.

In 2004, Wilson was at the controls of a Norfolk Southern train moving at 60 mph that demolished a concrete truck in Waverly. The truck was blocked as it straddled the tracks by a car waiting to make a left turn on a parallel street.

The driver survived, though he was injured, said Wilson, who added that he didn't walk away unscathed either.

"For about two weeks, when I closed my eyes at night, the image was just burned in," Wilson said. "I kept seeing that truck on the tracks."

While train-vehicle collisions remain a public safety issue nationwide, in recent years they've been eclipsed by incidents involving pedestrians.

"There are more people in America killed walking across or near railroad tracks than are killed or injured in vehicles crossing the tracks - that's been true since 1996," said Marmie Edwards, vice president of communications for Operation Lifesaver, based in Alexandria.

Wilson added, "There have been a lot of incidents where kids have had headphones on."

Jackson said people don't realize the enormous power of a rolling, 25,000-ton train moving at 50 mph on straight track.

Though they're equipped with an array of braking systems, it can take as much as a mile from the time the brakes are applied before a train can come to a stop, he said.

"The law of physics takes over," he said. "You're just a spectator then. It's really a helpless feeling."

Robert McCabe, 446-2327, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com