After Tragedy, Train Crew Returns to New Nightmare : Railroading: Near spot where Buena Park youth died in daredevil game, another stands on tracks, escapes.

Conductor Michael Lepker was peering out the window of a 200-ton locomotive early Easter Sunday when an 18-year-old thrill-seeker standing precariously near the tracks suddenly stumbled into the path of the thundering freight train.

Brakeman Brian Horgan frantically engaged the emergency system, but it was too late to stop the unforgiving mass of moving steel. Ryan Adam Pennington of Buena Park was killed instantly. His bewildered parents were left to mourn the loss of their youngest son, who had apparently lined up with four friends on a railroad trestle, waiting to feel the train’s windy wake before his fatal misstep.

The train’s crew members quietly went on medical leave, haunted by recurring flashbacks, self-recriminations and depression. They began receiving counseling from a trauma psychologist.

On Tuesday, two weeks and two days after the incident on April 3, they felt emotionally strong enough to return to work.

But as their 70-car freight train roared through Buena Park at about 2:45 a.m. on their first day back on the job, they were struck by a terrifying sense of deja vu.

Five hundred feet away, a young man not much older than Pennington stood planted in the middle of the railroad tracks, staring down the approaching locomotive.

They sounded the horn. They trained a blinding spotlight on the tracks. All to no avail.

Once again, Horgan was forced to activate the emergency brakes. An ear-splitting screech echoed in the darkness as the 3,100-ton train ground 8,000 feet to a halt.

The man held firm until the train, traveling about 32 m.p.h., was within 40 feet of him. Then, crew members later said, he darted out of its path in the nick of time, escaping after being briefly detained. It’s not known why he faced down the train.

After the near miss, crew members who had struggled to overcome their apprehension about climbing back aboard a train were back to square one.

“We were so upset we couldn’t even finish the trip,” Lepker, 38, of Barstow said afterward. “I thought, ‘It’s the same thing we ran into when Ryan Pennington was killed, only this time we missed. This is just insane. But what else can we do? We have families so we’ve got to work.”

For five hours, he said, the train sat idle on the tracks. A Santa Fe van came to pick up the dazed crew members and ferry them home.

Peggy Lepker, the conductor’s wife, expressed her anger Tuesday at the foolhardy youngsters who have turned her husband’s life’s dream into a living nightmare. Lepker worked in the railway yard for 17 years before becoming a conductor two years ago.

“Something really needs to be done to let these kids see what these guys have gone through and what this does to their families,” she said. “This Easter has been absolute hell for all of us.”

“I can’t tell you what it’s like to watch your husband go through this . . . he’d have nightmares, and didn’t realize it,” she said. “I’d have to wake him up. He’s just a lot more unsure of himself.”

Peggy Lepker said her husband and his fellow crew members were excited about returning to work together for the first time since Pennington’s death. But now, it’s unclear when, if ever, they will work the train again.

“Now they’re right back where they were,” she said.

She said they will spend today, the day before their fourth wedding anniversary, with the trauma psychologist who has been treating Lepker.

“I called the psychologist right away,” she said. “He made it a double session and said he feels that it’s probably going to be at least next Monday before he would want them to go back to work,” Lepker said.

Santa Fe Railroad officials also expressed alarm Tuesday over the latest incident, which occurred 7.4 miles east of the site where Pennington was killed. According to spokesman Mike Martin, the young man stood in the path of the train as it was heading east from Los Angeles to Barstow.

The man was briefly detained by Lepker and other crew members who chased him down the tracks and apprehended him. But after a scuffle broke out, Martin said, the man got away.

However, Martin said, a witness told Santa Fe Railway police the identity of the man, and railway officials referred the case to the Orange County district attorney.

Martin said 53 people were injured or killed in 1992 after they trespassed on railroad tracks.

“There are suicides, people playing chicken with trains--we’ve seen people foolishly jogging down the middle of the tracks with a Walkman radio on,” Martin said. “We’ve even seen people lay down between the rails to prove to friends at a party that a fast-moving train rolling over them won’t kill them if they’re between the rails, and they wind up dead.”