Jarring Stop : Train Trip Home Anything but Routine

Roberta Dinow figured she had about 90 seconds before the Amtrak train she was riding Thursday night pulled into her stop, the San Juan Capistrano station.

Two other passengers were working their way back to their seats from the bathrooms, and once they cleared the aisle, she thought, she’d make her move to beat the crowd to the door.

Then the train hit the truck.

“It was like an airplane going through a meteor shower,” said Dinow, who was riding near the back of the train as she returned to her Dana Point home from visiting a friend in Van Nuys.

“First you felt the impact, then you heard the noise,” Dinow said. “Then the lights are going out. Then all this debris is flying by the window, and the smoke is going by the window, and you could hear crunching sounds under the wheels as they were rolling over it.”

One person was injured slightly in the collision, which occurred about 8:45 p.m. when the southbound train carrying about 150 passengers struck a loaded car-transport on a private grade-crossing to the Rancho Capistrano religious retreat, police and Amtrak officials said.

The truck, loaded with eight salvaged cars, became stuck on the crossing as the driver, identified as Gillermo Madrigal Salas, 25, of Tijuana tried to use the private road to turn the rig around on Camino Capistrano, said Officer Carol Kelly of the California Highway Patrol’s San Juan Capistrano office, which is investigating the accident.

“Suddenly the lights started flashing and he sees the headlight of the train and jumps out of the truck,” Kelly said. “He ran just as the train was striking the tractor and trailer.”

She said it was unclear why the truck, which is registered in San Diego, was in the area.

Dominick Albano, an Amtrak spokesman based in Oakland, said engineer Mark Hodgson, based in San Diego, was operating the train. He said Hodgson saw the truck blocking the tracks in time to set the emergency brake and clamber out of the train’s cab before the collision, avoiding serious injury.

The train sustained heavy damage, Albano said, forcing Amtrak to take it out of service and use a bus Friday morning to accommodate passengers expecting to take the 8:40 train from San Diego to Los Angeles. Service was expected to return to normal over the weekend.

Dinow, the passenger, said the train eventually came to a halt in the darkness.

“There were two houses on the hillside, two little farmhouses, then nothing,” Dinow said. “You can’t really see anything--little specks of dust. And you can smell what I presume was the brakes burning.”

The doors opened once the train stopped, she said, and first conductors and then firefighters and paramedics hurried through the cars checking for injuries. Passengers also took stock of what had happened.

“For the first half-hour, we were just sitting in the back of the train with the lights off, everybody speculating about what was going on,” Dinow said. “Everyone was passing cell phones around so people could call friends and family.”

After a time, people began leaving the train. Some who lived nearby called cabs to pick them up and take them home. Most, though, stayed on the train, Dinow said, while crews cleared debris from the track and inspected the train’s undercarriage for damage. As it became clear that no one was seriously injured, moods lifted.

“It sort of turned into jokes and laughter,” Dinow said.

Outside the train, some passengers and firefighters were treated to an impromptu violin concert by 11-year-old Christine Grim of Ceres, just south of Modesto. Firefighters, spotting the girl’s violin case, asked her to play to calm both her and her younger sister.

Dinow said the train eventually moved backward a few miles to a junction where a northbound train picked up the remaining stranded passengers, dropping them off at the Irvine station around 11 p.m. Dinow’s husband picked her up at the station, she said. Other passengers were taken home by bus, Kelly said. A later southbound train picked up the remainder, arriving in San Diego about midnight, two hours late, Albano said.

But the reverse trip through the wreckage took the passengers on a surreal tour, Dinow said.

“The huge truck was cut in half, and all the cars scattered everywhere,” Dinow said. “There were six flatbed trucks picking it all up. The wonderful thing is that nobody was hurt.”