Tightknit ‘Train Family’ United in Grief, Buoyed by Their Bonds

They are a “train family,” early risers who file into Metrolink cars before sunup and in no time at all know one another’s pets and kids, work and hobbies, strengths and weaknesses.

That’s why, less than 24 hours after 11 people died when the 5:07 out of Moorpark crashed south of Burbank, survivors and those who missed that fateful train returned to the rails Thursday morning. They wanted to check on their friends, and mourn those whose usual seats were newly vacant.

“These are people I see every day, and I had to find out how they are,” said Russell Murry, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority manager who survived Wednesday’s collision by bracing his feet against a seat.

In a dark suit and tie, Murry, 37, was the first to arrive in the moonlit darkness Thursday morning, unconcerned for his safety.

Train 100, which he had been taking for only a month, was canceled Thursday. So Murry and fellow survivors mixed with the regulars on the 6:02 a.m. -- a departure time chillingly close to the moment when Wednesday’s 5:07 slammed into an SUV, setting off a three-train wreck.

“You don’t think lightning is going to strike twice,” he said of his return. “But I’ve aged 10 years in the last 24 hours.”

Chuck Porter, an eight-year rider out of Simi Valley, could manage no comforting perspective on the tragedy. He’d lost high-spirited Julia Bennett, a 44-year-old clerk-typist in the Los Angeles Fire Department.

“I usually sit right next to her,” Porter said. They would board together about 6 a.m., but on Wednesday, Bennett took the 5:07 instead.

“She was bubbly and so full of life,” said Porter, 55, a manager in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “She’d dieted the last few months and lost 40 pounds, and she was loving it.”

Porter had talked to Bennett last week about an upcoming trip to Arizona. She had planned to attend a rock and mineral show with her husband.

Porter never got a chance to find out how things went.

“Her family will miss her, but we’ll miss her too,” he said. “We feel like train family.”

Theresa Dunaway, a research coordinator at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, nodded. “Chuck knows my kids,” she said.

“She knows my faults,” he replied, smiling across the aisle at Dunaway. “But she doesn’t talk about them.”

Bumping along through the predawn darkness Thursday, old friends traded hugs and handshakes, giving voice to the camaraderie that had quietly, almost unnoticeably, built up over years of riding the rails.

They rattled off names, asking if people they knew, if only by sight or a single name, were alive and unhurt. They talked of the previous day’s frantic search through newspapers and television broadcasts to look for familiar faces, of taking joy even in finding their friends bloodied and battered. At least they were alive.

In hushed tones, commuters added bits and pieces to their common knowledge of the crash. The 11 dead; 180 injured. How anyone, even if he was suicidal, could put his SUV in the path of an oncoming train. The awful coincidence of a sidelined freight train and an oncoming commuter train at the exact spot where the 5:07 left the tracks.

Dunaway sought out train conductor Louie Gonzalez and pulled him aside, where they hugged quietly.

Gonzalez somberly sought out people he knew.

“Did you hear about Tom?” he asked.

Thomas Ormiston, 58, a veteran conductor, was killed while working the northbound Metrolink train that collided with the southbound Ventura County train.

“And Scotty in the wheelchair,” Gonzalez added. “They took him out [of the train] but he wasn’t covered up.”

Southern California Gas Co. employee Michelle Cook took the news of Ormiston’s death hard. She knew him only as Tom.

“He was a sweetheart and a gentleman who never had a scowl on his face,” Cook said. “And he was looking forward to retirement, and fishing. That’s all he could talk about. So sad.”

Despite it all, many passengers said they would continue to commute by train.

“I have no problem with train safety,” said Jaques Codye, who works for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “If they had a train wreck once a week, it would still be safer than the highway.”

As a group, passengers in the train’s lead car said they claimed the same seats every day. They are quick to call and check up on each other whenever someone goes missing.

“We have each others’ e-mail and we have each other on speed dial,” said Patti Austin, 51, a Camarillo resident who works for an equity investment firm in Anaheim.

“The main thing I wanted to do was see my friends, even if I knew they were OK. They are like my touchstones.”

After Wednesday’s accident, some passengers switched from the “coffin car,” as they called the lead carriage of trains pushed by rear locomotives, to cars further back.

John Krattli, a county counsel in Los Angeles who survived Wednesday’s crash without injury, chose the third car.

“This car had nothing like the damage of the first two cars,” Krattli said. “But even here, we had people injured. Everybody was stunned and dazed, and you helped the individuals you could.”

Amtrak employee Bobbi Nicholson, 53, said the crash scene was “all blocked out from my mind.” She’d been reading a newspaper when the collision occurred.

Metrolink put Nicholson on a train home to Simi Valley after the accident, and she was there by noon.

Simi Valley resident Jon Arcara also rode the earliest Metrolink train Thursday morning -- his 47th birthday.

The industrial equipment manufacturer had been in the front car of the early train Wednesday but disembarked at the downtown Burbank stop.

As he walked to work, he heard the sirens of fire engines and ambulances racing to the crash.

Arcara said he spent much of Wednesday staring into a computer screen, searching for any hint of the fate of friends and acquaintances.

On one website, he saw the TV movie buff he’d talked to on the train that morning -- bloody but alive.

Arcara, a New York native, expressed no qualms about hopping on the train again Thursday morning.

“I already got what I wanted for my birthday,” he said of escaping the crash. “I just feel lucky, I feel blessed.”

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Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this story.