Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Norfolk Southern Train Uses Games And A Horror Story To Push Rail Safety

Stan Jastrzebski
/
WBAA News

In Indiana last year, 34 people – 19 pedestrians and 15 automobile passengers -- were killed by encounters with trains. That places the Hoosier State among the ten worst in America for train fatalities.

To try to stem that tide, Norfolk Southern Railroad officials have embarked on their yearly Project Lifesaver train rides. It’s an effort to keep pedestrians and motorists safer around train tracks.

Think about it like this: what sits beneath most rails? Often, it's loose gravel.

If you take a wrong step, it could be more than just a slip-up, like it was for Ohio State University student Mark Kalina, Jr. two years ago.

“I was involved in a trespassing incident on October 12, 2012 that resulted in both my legs being amputated,” Kalina remembers.

Mark and his father Mark, Sr. are sitting in a restored, 1940s era railcar that’s now part of the Project Lifesaver train Norfolk Southern runs to teach people about train safety. It’s uncomfortable to look at his metal limbs and ask him to recount how he got them.

“One night I was out with friends and on my way home I was walking back to my apartment and decided to use train tracks as a shortcut," the younger Kalina says. "There was a train stopped on the tracks and I was walking along that train and I was going to walk around the end of it. But as I was walking along it, I slipped, reached out with my right arm and my sleeve got snagged on the train.”

Kalina hung on as long as he could before falling beneath the train. Doctors initially didn’t think he’d survive. It’s hard not to imagine this train devoted to safety is anything but a rolling reminder of the night he almost died. Norfolk Southern spokesman Robin Chapman says those reminders are necessary, especially for pedestrians.

“We refer to them as trespassers, because that’s what it is," he says. "Railroad tracks are private property and it’s dangerous and illegal to be on railroad tracks. So we’re trying to get the word out to discourage people from using the tracks as shortcuts or recreational trails. Because what we’ve found is most people don’t realize railroad tracks are private property.”

As he walks through the train pointing out its features, Chapman stops at one that gets a lot of use.

“The most popular feature here is our locomotive simulator, which is actually fairly realistic. You sit at the engineer’s seat and operate the throttle and try to adjust the train’s speed to the terrain that you see coming at you on the screen there.”

The simulator looks like the inside of an engine cab, but with a video monitor where the front window would be. It’s a little nerve-wracking clicking the throttle up and watching the train accelerate and making sure to blow the whistle appropriately as the train crosses a road.

Up in this train’s actual cab, engineer James Snoeberger says the cars that stopped at the gates in the simulator don’t always stop in real life.

“It’s a daily occurrence seeing people drive around the crossing gates at railroad crossings, especially in the major cities," Snoeberger says. "And sometimes we only have, you know, maybe a few cars and it’d only be a minute wait or less.”

Outside, the conductor and railyard employees flip some switches and the train departs.

It’ll end today’s journey in Illinois, but that’s just the latest station stop along the road toward avoiding accidents.

Related Content