As Union Pacific Railroad engineer Craig Peters starts his locomotive south out of Brighton toward Commerce City, Adams County sheriff’s Deputy Dave Irwin stands behind Peters in the cab, alerting officers staged along the route to the highway crossings the train is nearing.
“Bromley (Lane) will be next,” Irwin says as the train rolls through Brighton.
The aim is to catch motorists trying to scurry through crossings as the train approaches while bells sound, lights flash and gates come down.
UP and local police departments are trying to cut down on train-motorist collisions by stepping up enforcement.
The railroad has 2,000 miles of track in Colorado and 1,258 crossings statewide, including about 250 in Adams and Weld counties.
“Statewide we hit a lot of vehicles, and one of the worst areas is Weld County and Adams County,” said Cayl England, a special agent with UP’s police department, as he briefed officers from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office, Brighton police and the Colorado State Patrol before Thursday’s enforcement exercise. “We want to see if we can start saving some lives.” Heightened enforcement seems to be working, he adds.
In 2006, there were 18 crossing accidents and only seven crossing citations and warnings issued, he said. Last year, citations and warnings grew to 89, and the number of accidents dropped to nine.
About 1,500 feet before the East 72nd Avenue crossing in Commerce City, Peters sounds the train horn.
The driver of a white pickup chooses not to stop and races across the tracks as lights flash, bells ring and the crossarm comes down. (An officer was unable to go after him, because he was already confronting someone who had been walking along the tracks.)
Peters, 52, says he’s hit three cars in his 34-year career. The occupants “all walked away” without injury, he said, noting there is little an engineer can do if motorists try to beat a train.
A 6,000-ton train with 105 coal cars, running empty and traveling 55 mph, would take at least a mile to stop after emergency braking is applied, Peters said.
As train engineers approach crossings, “Our two worst nightmares are a tank truck or a school bus,” Peters said. “The tank truck because we don’t know what’s in it.”
He doesn’t need to elaborate on the school-bus scenario.
Heading north through the center of Brighton, Peters is on the horn nearly constantly. At East 168th Avenue, he stops the train and a new group of police officers crowds into the locomotive’s cab for the enforcement run.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
