Accident near hudson lake.

Around 6:30 on Wednsday afternoon, at the Quincy Road grade crossing. One of our eastbound south bend passenger trains was involved in a car/train collision. Needless to say, the car did not win. A mother and her child were on the way to a girl scout meeting and went around the gates. The train hit the SUV on the engineers side and tossed the car off to the side of the track. The mother was launched out of the car about 30 ft. She currently has a shattered pelvis and well as injuried to her legs and ribs. Her daughter walked away with minor cuts and scrapes. Both were wearing seat belts. The train was going 79 mph at the time of the accident. The cars involved were cars 28 and 30, car 28 being the east car. The pilot was folding up under the car and pushed the steps into the wheelset, all windows on the south side of the car were damaged by flying glass and metal, as well as most of the underbody equipment on the "B" end of the car.

That would be Quince Road, the main crossing in Lydick.

I hate to sound like a heartless foamer, but I sure hope this incident didn't damage the crossing signal on the south side of the crossing! It's the home of one of only two "teardrop" bells that remain on the South Shore! (The other is at Meer Road.)

I read Santucci's HTOTHI column then I read this... A week ago we have the discussion on the Amtrak board about the accident in Connecticut. There should be tire spikes that go up, like at the rental car lots, at the tracks as protection for both train and motorist. Hopefully the train crew/passengers are okay physically and psychologically. The lady driving should be fined heavily (>$20,000) and have her license suspended too. Driving a car around down gates is like drunk driving - it puts others at risk as well as yourself.

Tadman wrote:There should be tire spikes that go up, like at the rental car lots, at the tracks as protection for both train and motorist.

That's actually an excellent idea. Too bad it would never fly, at least not in this country.

no kidding, could you ever see DOT crews and RR crews installing those at the crossing? In reality long-span gates are probably a better answer.

For some reason my idea brings to mind that jack lemmon movie where he's the ex-president and he drives that lexus over the spikes.

Boy, we'd be replacing alot of tires if the spikes were to ever stick or jam in the "up" position.

I went home to SB last week for a visit and went out to the crossing the following morning. You could see the scratches in the road, and in the dirt made by the SUV. It just missed the gates, no damage to them or the bell that I could see.

Spikes may not stop the momentum.

She should not have gone around the gates but she is paying for the mistake now.

I never like to see these kinds of things happening but people just don't learn.

The gates are down, well, something IS coming...

Girl scouting can wait.

But now girl scouting is really gonna wait

The thing is that the church is right next to the crossing. The gates come down, the train flies past at 79 mph, the gates go up. Takes all of 30 seconds for all this to happen. I'd like to see her get charged with child endangerment. Too bad you can't ticket her for stupidity. She'll probably sue NICTD (for having a way to get around the gates), and Ford Motor Co. (for building her SUV), when in reality NICTD should sue her.

Good news regarding crossings - I was railfanning at Hegewisch on Tuesday at about noon, and a NS C39-7 and MRL SD45 were shunting around the auto rack yard, when they ran light to the east side of the Burnham intersection and stopped, with gates still down. Four cars waited for a while, then all crossed the down gates. Think about this, there's about 4-6 track including CSS and NS with two seperate sets of gates. That's got to be the dumbest thing I've ever seen on the drivers' part. However, a Burnham cop was right behind them and ticketed all four cars before they could get past the Brainerd Ave stoplight. Serves 'em right.