LA HABRA : Tracking Down Rail Trespassers

Flanked by two police officers on motorcycles, a diesel train powered down a stretch of track as a third officer on board watched for the inevitable.

The inevitable happened when a driver barely managed to stop before reaching the track, coming so close that the barricade dropped onto her hood. Still other drivers ignored the lights and bells and sped through intersections before the gates blocked them.

The officers riding beside the train, radioed by the lookout officer on board, gave the violators warnings and a brochure by Union Pacific Railroad’s “Operation Lifesaver” program.

The two-hour exercise Tuesday between Idaho Street and Harbor Boulevard was part of that program, designed to catch drivers who violate laws at railroad crossings and people who play on the train tracks.

“It gets worse in the evening, when people are trying to get home from work,” said engineer James Burrows of Lakewood, who has piloted trains for 34 years.

Children sometimes stand on the tracks in front of the train, Burrows said. Some also “put boards next to the tracks and jump their bikes across ahead of the train.”

The maximum speed for trains in La Habra is 20 m.p.h. When a young man darted across the tracks about 50 yards in front of the slow-moving locomotive Tuesday, brakeman Jerry Olson warned that “if he’d have slipped, we couldn’t have stopped.”

Tuesday’s exercise, titled “Trooper on a Train,” was part of a monthlong effort to increase the public’s awareness of dangers along railroad tracks. Six to 10 warnings were issued, police said.

Nationwide in 1988, more than 6,500 vehicle accidents occurred at railroad crossings, resulting in 3,225 deaths, railroad spokesman Jim McInerney said. An additional 444 people died trespassing on the tracks, McInerney said.

Operation Lifesaver, which began in 1972, operates throughout the United States and in Canada, Mexico and Europe.

In La Habra, Officer Rich Kanger stationed himself on the outside walkway of the train and dispatched the two officers riding beside the train to chase drivers who failed to yield to flashing lights.

McInerney also is visiting schools in La Habra to explain the dangers associated with trains.

“When a person gets involved in a collision with a train, the person is always injured,” he said.