3 Killed, 1 Hurt When Train Hits Van : Accidents: The victims were in a vehicle that had stopped on tracks near an unmarked crossing west of Moorpark.

Three men were killed and another was seriously injured Friday when an Amtrak train slammed into their van on the tracks west of Moorpark and dragged the vehicle more than a quarter mile, authorities said.

The bright yellow van had stopped on the tracks near an unmarked crossing just east of Balcom Canyon Road and California 118 about 4:30 p.m., and the engineer on the southbound train apparently was not able to avoid the collision, authorities said.

Two of the passengers in the van were ejected, California Highway Patrol Sgt. Matt DeMarco said, and two others were trapped inside the twisted wreckage that eventually came to rest directly in front of the locomotive.

None of those who were killed were identified Friday evening, pending notification of relatives.

The men inside the van and one of the two ejected were pronounced dead at the scene, DeMarco said.

The other passenger, 28-year-old Antonio Chavez of Oxnard, suffered a compound fracture of his left knee and a broken left hand. He was in stable condition at Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo after surgery Friday evening.

Chavez’s sister, Bertha Chavez, said the four workers, all from Oxnard, had just gotten off work after picking carrots in a field near the crossing.

Investigators said the men apparently were agricultural workers who had just driven out of a field on a road that crosses the tracks.

The fatal wreck comes at a time when safety experts fear an increase in such deaths because of more high-speed trains rolling through the county.

Metrolink, which debuted in October and links Moorpark with downtown Los Angeles, is running eight trains a day through eastern Ventura County. These trains, like those run by Amtrak, run more frequently and faster than the slower-moving freight trains.

Police broadcasts reported that the Amtrak train was going as fast as 65 m.p.h. when it struck the van.

C. Larry, an Amtrak conductor on the train that left Santa Barbara at 3:15 p.m. and was due to arrive in San Diego shortly after 9 p.m., said passengers felt the jolt of the emergency brakes being applied moments before the crash.

“We felt it before we hit anybody, because they threw the emergency,” Larry said. “I told all the passengers, anybody that was standing up, to hold on.”

Jeff Cherry, 14, of Santa Clarita was on the train during the crash and said the force of the brakes being applied threw him into the seat in front of him. “I went flying,” he said.

Passengers sat in the train waiting for the arrival of buses after the crash as Ventura County firefighters worked to cut the trapped victims out of the van and investigators probed the wreckage and shined flashlights under each of the trains seven cars and locomotive looking for clues.

The train passengers were loaded onto the buses bound for Union Station about 7 p.m., and the train began moving again about 9 p.m.

CHP Officer George Orosco, who interviewed some co-workers of the accident victims, was told that one of the men, who had just moved into a new house, had said his children were pestering him to open their Christmas presents early.

He reportedly said the request was getting harder and harder to deny.

At least one other motorist has been killed at a crossing east of Balcom Canyon Road in recent years. The driver of a flatbed truck died in January, 1986, when his vehicle stopped on the track and was struck by an Amtrak passenger train.

In 1990, at least six people were killed in train accidents, prompting officials from the Ventura County Transportation Commission to develop an education program aimed at making residents more aware of the dangers trains can pose. At least three people were killed in train accidents in 1991, and there have been at least four other fatalities this year.

Most of the accidents involved individuals who wandered onto the tracks at the wrong time or fell asleep on them. But on Jan. 13, 78-year-old Phyllis Gilbert of Camarillo died when her car apparently stalled in the path of an Amtrak train at a crossing on Los Posas Road at 5th Street, south of Camarillo.

Times correspondent Kay Saillant and Times staff writer Carlos V. Lozano contributed to this story.