Date With Death : Train Trestle’s Haunting Legacy Spurs a Father to Action

The northbound passenger train came almost silently onto the wood-and-steel bridge, its fierce breath blowing Henry Ruley aside like an afterthought as it whooshed past at 90 m.p.h.

There was no telltale clackety-clack of the rails announcing its approach. Just that shuddering rush of turbulent wind that brushed him aside and then abruptly pulled him toward the train’s wake. And the whistle that finally blew when the train was upon him.

For three days now, at precisely the same moment, the 70-year-old Washington state man has come to this spot on the legendary railroad bridge just south of San Clemente, known simply as The Trestle.

He’s there to meet the northbound Amtrak train that passes through San Onofre State Park each day at 12:50 p.m., passing within a few feet of one of Southern California’s most popular surfing beaches.

Ruley wants to see the train that killed his son, feel the fury of its passing. And he wants to stop other youths from being run over on the trestle that has become a shortcut for hundreds of board-laden surfers heading toward the sandy beach below.

Last Thursday, 22-year-old Adam James Ruley was struck by the train as he and two friends crossed the venerable span while taking a shortcut from adjacent Trestles Beach.

While his friends walked directly on the tracks, the North County grocery clerk carried his bicycle along a protected catwalk on the opposite side of a steel girder wall that runs a third of the way along the 250-foot-long bridge, his father said.

But as he came around the wall at the end of the catwalk, he was suddenly met by the train he never saw as it swept by. It hooked Ruley’s bike, breaking his neck as it dragged him for more than 40 yards along the tracks. He was dead at the scene.

Two days later, Ruley’s parents arrived from the Seattle area to lay their son to rest in a private ceremony in which his cremated remains were spread across San Diego Bay. But Henry Ruley says he doesn’t want the issue of what he calls a dangerous train crossing to die along with Adam.

“My son has died a terrible death here,” Ruley said Wednesday afternoon as he stood at the exact spot where his son was struck. “I grieve for my son terribly but I can’t do anything for him now. But I can do something for the living.”

Moments after the northbound train passed, Ruley walked along the bridge to a dark spot near the tracks, holding onto the wooden rail to steady himself. “See, this is where my boy finally lay,” he concluded softly.

It was the boy Ruley had introduced to surfing lessons at age 12, who grew up loving the sport and the clean, crisp atmosphere of the Southern California beaches.

It was the boy who called his father long-distance from his home in Vista only a few days before just to say he loved him. And to tell him of a job interview that was to take place the afternoon he died.

But those are just memories now for Henry Ruley.

“God, Adam,” he said, standing on the bridge. “I’m not going to let you die in vain.”

On Tuesday, Ruley had already begun to make good on his promise. He called the office of County Supervisor John McDonald to investigate which state agency would be responsible for making changes at the trestle.

Ruley, a retired structural engineer who worked for Orange County and the state of California, believes that, at the very least, a trip switch should be installed to alert people walking along the bridge, which is posted by two “No Trespassing” signs.

Better yet, he says, the bridge should be permanently fenced off. Also, an adjacent walkway should be built for the surfers--many of whom prefer to run the bridge’s 250-yard gauntlet across the mouth of a marshy estuary rather than trudge in the nearby sand with their bulky surfboards.

Ruley, who moved to the Seattle area from Carlsbad four months ago, is disappointed not to have heard from either Amtrak or the Santa Fe railroad--which operates the tracks--since the accident.

“It would have been a nice gesture,” he said. “I guess to them, my son is just another statistic. But not to me.”

Mike Martin, a spokesman for the Santa Fe, said that at least two or three pedestrians die each year from being struck on the tracks between San Diego and San Clemente. But the trestle at San Onofre State Beach has not been cited as a particular problem.

“Sure, those tracks are a dangerous place,” Martin said. “Sixteen Amtrak trains pass over them each day--eight in each direction. They’re going at 90 miles an hour, 135 feet per second.

“And with the quarter-mile strips of continuously welded rail we’ve installed this year, they run pretty silent. You don’t hear the clackety-clack anymore. But still, you’ve got people sleeping on the tracks or jogging on them while wearing a Walkman.

“We just can’t keep people off the tracks. And a fence isn’t practical because we haven’t got the manpower to patrol it. They’d tear it down as soon as we put it up.”

Martin said he was open to suggestions on how to close the trestle to pedestrian traffic. “I don’t know if we would consider putting warning lights or sirens in there, but we would like to see the county or the state build a pedestrian bridge.”

Greg Booth would like that idea just fine. The lifeguard at San Onofre State Beach says he long ago stopped scolding the 300 to 400 surfers he sees on the trestle during weekend patrols. “They don’t do it on a dare--they just want to use the bridge as a 10-minute shortcut,” he said.

The surfers use the span to cross the marshy estuary to Lower Trestles Beach, just to the south, as well as a vantage point to scope out the surf, he said.

Many of the surfers aren’t aware of the train schedules and walk precariously along the tracks, waiting to duck down onto a lower culvert that runs along the tracks, grab onto the rail and hang on for dear life--if they see a train approach, Booth said.

“Most of these kids aren’t afraid of anything,” he said. “I’ve seen some run along the tracks right in front of the train. When it catches up with them, they finally leap down to cling onto the wooden rail. Or they make the 25-foot jump off the side of the bridge.

“Some might break a leg or an arm. But their attitude is ‘Hey, at least I didn’t damage my board.’ Most wouldn’t think of saving themselves first.”

Booth said he was first at the scene when Ruley was killed.

“That kid had everything going against him,” he said. “The wind was blowing hard, so he probably didn’t hear the train whistle. After he died, all his friends could keep saying to themselves at the scene was, ‘Why do we do this? Why?’ ”

The bridge, Booth said, is the last obstacle of a long trek surfers face to reach picturesque Trestles Beach.

For years, the beach was closed to surfers. Now, hundreds of youths park their cars east of Interstate 5 and make their way along the 1 1/2-mile walkway that was opened in 1972 when former First Lady Pat Nixon developed a fondness for the sweeping stretches of beach within view of her San Clemente home.

Though it saves them time, some surfers say they still avoid the dangerous trestle. “It’s just a foolish thing to do,” said Jesse Henry, 19, of Huntington Beach.

One day four years ago, Henry recalled, he was the last of five surfers to reach the safety of the catwalk area where Ruley met his death--a split-second before the train rushed past them.

“Those trains are just a lot faster and quieter now,” he said. “They stalk you on that bridge if you’re not careful. So I just stay away from there.”

Henry was just one of the surfers who offered their condolences to Henry Ruley as he walked along the path to the beach.

Along the walkway, other surfers had written graffiti messages to the young surfer known to his friends as “Kirby” because he used to hit the curb so often while learning to drive a car.

“Thanks Adam,” one message said. Another: “Remember Kirby.”

At the base of the bridge, just beneath the spot where Adam Ruley died, friends have posted a bronze memorial plaque. His mother and father--who have three older children--have brought flowers to the site, tenderly setting them on the arched wooden support beams.

“This is a frightening place,” Ruley said of the bridge as he lay more flowers at the memorial. “I cringe at the thought of that train and I don’t even like to get close to it. But I have this anger.

“As an engineer, we called places like these an attractive nuisance because they attracted people to danger. Well, this is an attractive death trap. It’s a hazard that’s been neglected by Amtrak and the railroad.

“And it’s obvious more kids will lose out while playing out their odds on this bridge.”

On Monday, Ruley almost witnessed a repeat of his son’s violent death.

As he stood on the south end of the bridge, he spotted a young surfer walking toward him over the span, his eyes glued to the ground.

Ruley saw a train silently approach and called out to the boy. “I yelled and screamed for him to get off the tracks. But he couldn’t hear me.”

At the last minute, the youth looked up and dashed to the safety of the mid-span catwalk. “When I reached him, he was still shaking,” Ruley said.

“I told him about my son dying there and he said he’d heard about it. But in the same breath, he told me he’d been crossing that bridge for years. He knew the dangers.”

Henry Ruley shook his head as he talked--like a man who had conversed with death and come back to tell the tale.

“My son knew that bridge, too,” he said. “It didn’t save him. And it’s not going to save any of these kids.”