Train Track Dangers Are Reiterated : Safety: In response to five fatal accidents since October, officials warn residents to stay away from the rails.

From where engineer Mike Dudgeon sits, the rules of the rail seem pretty simple: Stay out of his way.

Perched high in the metal nose of a 140-ton Metrolink locomotive, there is little Dudgeon and his fellow engineers can do to prevent their speeding trains from striking motorists and pedestrians who ignore the warnings of whistles, bells and lights, they say.

The once little-used railroad tracks of the Los Angeles area are increasingly host to dangerous commuter train traffic, catching many residents unawares, say mass transit officials.

“All I can do is hit the bell and the whistle and hope he moves,” Dudgeon said, slowly easing his three-car train to a stop Thursday in San Fernando. “They tend to move.”

But sometimes they don’t and the results are deadly. The periwinkle-and-white Metrolink trains travel at speeds nearing 80 m.p.h. and can require 1 1/2 miles to stop--giving little chance of avoiding a collision.

In response to five fatal accidents since the commuter rail service began in October, Metrolink officials Thursday repeated longstanding warnings to Southern Californians unaccustomed to the high-speed trains to stay away from the tracks.

“While Metrolink trains are a convenience, they are a force to be respected,” Metrolink Vice Chairman Dana Reed said at the Sun Valley intersection where a man sitting on the tracks was hit by a train and killed earlier this month.

Like Dudgeon in the locomotive, Reed and other rail officials can do little to stop accidents except sound their own whistles and bells in the form of school programs and police crackdowns on violators.

Even before the first train hurtled toward Union Station on Oct. 26, Metrolink officials began warning motorists and pedestrians to stay clear of the tracks and not to try to beat the trains through intersections.

But unlike the East Coast, where commuter trains are commonplace, regular rail service is still relatively new to many Southern Californians. So rail officials are trying to make them more aware.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies are posted at intersections along all three Metrolink routes--connecting Union Station with Pomona, Santa Clarita and Moorpark--to look for motorists and pedestrians trying to beat the trains.

Since Metrolink service began, deputies have made 175 arrests for trespassing on the tracks and issued about 300 citations to motorists trying to sneak around crossing barriers, Sgt. Marc Klugman said.

Schoolchildren caught playing along the tracks are taken to their school principals for discipline. And schools along the routes teach lessons on rail safety.

Several national studies have shown that authorities can do little else to prevent rail accidents involving pedestrians who wander in front of moving trains. Jim McInerney, transportation supervisor for the California Public Utilities Commission, said such accidents are “inevitable. They are going to happen.”

Fencing the routes to prevent trespassing would be too expensive, Metrolink officials have said, because the system is eventually planned to include 400 miles of track throughout Southern California.

Deputy Preston Clark, who patrols Metrolink’s Santa Clarita line, said it will just take time for people to become accustomed to the trains and obey traffic laws.

“People will learn--after a few more of them get run over--that this is something they really should not do,” Clark said.