Saving as Many as He Could

Scott Cox told me he was not very religious. But when a blond-haired man raced up the stairs of his rail car moments before the Metrolink crash and took cover, Cox did the same, an action he believes saved his life.

“I think maybe the guy who ran up the stairs was my guardian angel,” said Cox, who never saw him again and assumed he was killed.

But five days later, a man named Bruce Gray got hold of me.

“I can’t help but think that I am the guy that Steve Cox saw kneel in the train,” Gray wrote in an e-mail.

“I was the Engineer of #100.”

When I called Gray, a 34-year-old Santa Clarita resident with a wife and two little girls, he said he wanted me to let Cox know he was alive. He was banged up, with five broken bones in his back, but alive.

“My family saw your article and got real emotional, and thought it was appropriate that I respond,” Gray said.

Gray and I spoke a couple of times by phone and also face-to-face. He’s well over 6 feet tall, with the straight blond hair that Cox remembered.

Gray has been an engineer for 10 years, starting out in freight with Southern Pacific before joining Metrolink in 2000. Twice before, he was at the controls when someone committed suicide on the tracks. Countless times as an engineer, he’s seen distracted or foolish motorists and pedestrians come within seconds of death.

Though Gray projects strength, something in his blue eyes betrays the shock that lingers from the Jan. 26 wreck, and he admits he has not yet dealt with the tragedy that claimed 11 lives.

“I see it in my head,” he said. He doesn’t have nightmares, but sometimes on the edge of sleep, the crash replays. He’s at the controls of No. 100 in the morning darkness, thundering into Glendale at 70 mph.

An engineer is ever alert, Gray said, always anticipating a suicide jumper, an animal on the tracks, a car that lingers too long at a crossing.

This time, he says, “I saw an orange reflector.”

It was the right-turn signal of the Jeep Grand Cherokee that had been left on the tracks by a man who changed his mind about committing suicide.

The Jeep was roughly a quarter of a mile away.

“I plugged it,” Gray said, meaning that with his left hand, he immediately jammed the brakes into the emergency position.

But since his train was traveling at more than 70 mph, he knew it would smash into the Jeep and possibly crush the tiny control compartment he was riding in. With just seconds to act, Gray threw open the door of his cab and went through the train warning passengers.

“Hold on,” he remembers telling them.

At that moment, Gray assumed the rolling tonnage of his train would destroy the Jeep. He could not anticipate the chain reaction that would follow.

Scott McKeown -- a Moorpark train buff, husband and father of two -- was one of the first people Gray saw when he left the control cab on the train’s mezzanine level.

“His eyes were this big,” Gray said.

McKeown knew the whooshing sound of the brakes meant trouble. He would not survive.

Gray also saw Elizabeth Hill of Van Nuys, who was close to retirement at Glendale City Hall. She also would not survive.

The train barreled into the Jeep and Gray felt No. 100 derail. Looking ahead through a window, he realized they were in great danger. Just ahead were a parked freight train and the oncoming Metrolink Train No. 901, and Gray knew his careening, screeching train would collide with one of them.

He bounded upstairs to the train’s top level to warn passengers. Though some would later report they heard Gray tell them, “Brace yourselves,” he only remembers saying, “Hang on,” before kneeling down and facing the rear of the car.

Scott Cox saw that and did the same.

Then came the horrific, wrenching collision.

Gray’s train smashed into the freight train first, then jackknifed and collided with the northbound No. 901, which carried Gray’s close friend Tom Ormiston, a conductor.

“When we hit, I was thrown forward but not very far,” said Gray, who was slammed into the back of a seat, injuring his spine. “I was covered with debris and a lady had fallen on top of me, screaming that her arm was broken.

“I basically escaped death by one foot,” he says. Looking over his left shoulder, he realized he was inches from where the car had been torn open.

Gray saw a fire and called to Costco employees to get fire extinguishers.

“I told the lady on top of me, ‘We don’t have time to wait for someone to save us. We need to save ourselves.’ ”

He and others helped move the woman as the fire was being extinguished, and Gray was able to reach his cellphone and report the crash. Then he called his wife. After hanging up, he was overcome by smoke and soot and feared he would pass out.

In pain, Gray squirmed through an open window and called to people below to help break his fall. Once on the ground, he crawled 30 feet on hands and knees and then lay on his back, waiting for help and hoping that by some miracle, everyone had made it.

Sirens wailed. Injured passengers screamed. Firefighters sawed through a fence to get to the wreckage. A steady drizzle fell as dawn broke.

Gray asked rescue workers if there were any dead, and then he saw a tarp placed over a body.

Now he could see the engineer of No. 901 coming his way, and Gray asked where his buddy Tom Ormiston was. Ormiston had worked for Southern Pacific, too, and Gray says that, in the small community of rail employees, that made them SP brothers.

Gray knew by the vague answer from 901’s engineer that Ormiston, 58, of Northridge, a man with whom he had been planning a fly-fishing trip in the Sierra Nevada, was dead.

It’ll be several weeks before Gray can return to work. He says he has always loved the railroad -- “It built this country” -- and he looks forward to his return. But physically and emotionally, he’s not ready.

As for Scott Cox, a Glendale city meter reader recovering from foot and back injuries, Gray says:

“Just let him know I didn’t do anything special in my mind.... I’m glad to have been able to help somebody, and I’m glad he’s alive. I wish everybody else was, too.”

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.