Woman Hurt as Metrolink Slams Into Car at Crossing : Simi Valley: Marguerite Powell, 75, is in stable condition. Her car was stopped on the tracks when the train came upon her at 70 m.p.h.

A Metrolink train traveling at 70 m.p.h. slammed into a car stopped on a Simi Valley railroad crossing Monday afternoon, knocking the car across the intersection and injuring its 75-year-old driver.

Ventura County firefighters gingerly pulled Marguerite Powell from the smashed car and hustled her into a waiting ambulance, which took her to Simi Valley Adventist Hospital.

Powell was listed in stable condition Monday evening and was undergoing tests, said JoLynn de la Torre, a hospital spokeswoman.

Monday’s crash was the third Metrolink collision with another vehicle in the commuter line’s 9 1/2-month history, said Brendan Shepherd, a Metrolink spokesman.

It also was the second injury incident in 10 days at the crossing at Erringer Road and Los Angeles Avenue, where a Thousand Oaks man killed himself July 30 by jumping in front of an eastbound Southern Pacific freight train.

Witnesses on Monday said that Powell’s 1982 Ford Fairmont was stopped on the tracks, pointed south on Erringer Road at about 3 p.m., behind other cars waiting to turn right, when the warning bells sounded.

They said she appeared to be trying to back the car off the tracks in a panic when the fiberglass crossing gate came down on the car’s trunk.

“The crossing arm came down, and I guess she saw the train coming and wondered, ‘Should I go forward or should I go backward?’ ” said Karen Rogo of Simi Valley, who was stopped at a light on Los Angeles Avenue. “She looked confused. She started to go backward and--it happened so fast-- boom !, it hit her.”

Rogo’s friend, Linda Aguilar of Simi Valley, said she was stopped at the same light when the gates came down.

“I saw her backing up,” Aguilar said. “It looked like she was in a daze. The train went poof , you saw the car just get picked up and dropped down, you saw a puff of smoke come out of the engine.”

Officer Jeff Dominick of the Simi Valley Police Department confirmed the account. “She was stopped on the tracks, the crossing arm came down behind her, and for some reason she didn’t pull forward, and the train hit her,” he said.

The four Metrolink cars carrying about 35 passengers were being driven east at 70 m.p.h. from Moorpark by a diesel locomotive that would have taken a mile and a half to stop, Shepherd said.

Shepherd said that the engineer applied maximum brake pressure and sounded the horn as soon as the train rounded a curve and Powell’s car came into view, but the train was moving too fast to stop. Shepherd declined to identify the engineer, saying only that the man has more than 10 years experience on railways.

There were no injuries among passengers and the accident did not delay other trains, Shepherd said. The Metrolink train continued on its route about half an hour after the accident, he said.

Rogo and Aguilar said the intersection should be made safer. They said they were friends of Larry Robert Hall, the man who flung himself in front of the Southern Pacific train.

“A friend of mine died here last week,” Aguilar said. “They’ve got to do something more, I don’t know what.”

Shepherd said the crossing equipment, installed by Southern Pacific, meets all state safety requirements.

“There’s gates, bells and flashers at that intersection,” he said.

The warning devices go off for about four seconds before the gate is down, and “you have about 20 to 30 seconds warning after the gate is completely dropped before the train would cross the intersection.

“The only thing to do to make an intersection like that safer is to close it,” Shepherd said. “We do everything we can to provide adequate warning devices.”

There also are signs posted. They read: “Do Not Stop on Tracks.”