On Thursday morning a deluxe train from the golden age of rail travel came rolling through the Twin Cities with a message of caution and warning against walking on train tracks.
A few hours later, an Amtrak train hit and killed a woman near Puyallup.
Dean Dahlin, the veteran train engineer and radio weatherman who led Thursday’s safety train, could only mutter “Oh boy” when told about yet another death on the tracks.
“It’s just sad because it doesn’t have to happen,” said Dahlin, who is the state Union Pacific coordinator for Operation Lifesaver, a safety effort. “Usually it’s not paying attention or not hearing the train.”
Six people have died this year in Washington train collisions, including Thursday afternoon’s death in Puyallup.
Dahlin, who has driven Union Pacific trains for 41 years, has hit a vehicle or person nine times. One girl died in a collision near Rochester. Another girl walking with her miraculously survived, Dahlin said.
He said many people have a hard time understanding how difficult it is to hear a train coming.
Believe it, he said.
Trains roll on a continuous ribbon of steel and don’t make the traditional click-clack sound. Fast trains running against a headwind could have the equivalent of 80 mph winds blowing their sounds, even their whistles, away from someone walking on or near the tracks.
Add iPods and cell phones, and the result is an ongoing tragedy as trains hit people who literally never heard them coming.
That was the message that 400 Twin Cities residents heard on Thursday during a series of short rides on the set of luxurious train cars that Union Pacific sent on a tour through the Northwest.
Based in Cheyenne, Wyo., the air conditioned train cars with bubble-top domes date from the 1950s. They were frequent visitors to the Twin Cities in the 1960s in the waning days of rail travel, Dahlin said.
Tickets for the ride were given away at stores and through radio promotions.
“I like trains!” said 4-year-old Molly Chapin of Centralia, who was riding with her grandpa.
“I do everything I can to addict them because I do model trains,” explained her grandpa Terry Arnold as he looked out the curving windows of the dome car at passing scenery with Molly and her two siblings. “A lot more people are getting attracted to train travel because it’s romantic.”
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Brian Mittge: (360) 807-8234
