Story County law enforcement officers and Ames city officials got a first-hand look yesterday at what the engineer of a train sees when approaching rail crossings.

Recently there have been complaints about the trains in Ames. The trains are “too loud,” “they blow their horns too often,” and, worst of all, “they’re dangerous.”

“This is the first year [the Union-Pacific railroad] has had more pedestrian-train incidents than car-train incidents,” said Charles Misner, manager of train operations in Marshalltown.

“In Ames there is a real problem with people running in front of the trains,” he said.

Misner said the route that passes through Ames runs from Chicago to Omaha.

“It’s the second busiest corridor in the Union-Pacific Route; 75 trains pass through the corridor each day,” he said.

According to a recent press release, there were 118 crashes, 43 injuries and seven deaths from highway-rail crossing collisions in 1996.

“They don’t even know when they hit a car,” he said. “The average car weighs 3,000 pounds and the average pop can weighs 12 ounces. That’s a 4,000-to-1 ratio, the same as a train to an automobile.”

John Smith, grade-crossing safety coordinator, said 50 percent of collisions occur at crossings with both lights and gates. He said most accidents occur at 2:30 p.m. and that 25 percent of the time, the car runs into the train.

“The speed limit for trains are set by the Federal Railroad Association and are imposed by the federal government,” Smith said. “Trains travel at 40 mph through Ames at the max.”

Precautionary steps have been taken to reduce the amount of car fatalities.

Herman Quirmbach, a member of the Ames City Council, said cameras were installed a year ago to survey the crossings and prevent citizens from attempting to go around the gates on Duff Avenue.

Worth said medians have been put in at the Clark Avenue crossing to deter people from going around the gate.

“People are in a hurry and sometimes the gates don’t operate well, and they’ll go down when there’s no train,” she said. “People take the chance and try to go around the gate; then they get caught on the tracks. That’s a pretty big monster going at that speed.”

Smith said the gates go down 24 seconds before the train crosses.

“In addition to the gates, there is an advance warning sign and a yield sign with flashing lights. What people don’t realize is that the train crossings have trains traveling in both directions, so you need to look both ways on both tracks before crossing,” Smith said.

Smith, Misner and McEuen all think the solution to Ames’ train problem is to let the trains travel at higher speeds.

“If we go 70 mph through town, people will respect the train,” Misner said.

McEuen added, “If the average train traveled 55 mph, it would take 55 seconds to pass the crossing. We need to raise the speed of the trains.”

Smith offered a simpler explanation. “Let the train go faster. That way the train will get through town faster, and across crossings faster,” he said.

Another concern of Ames residents is that the whistle blows constantly at night, about 150 to 200 times.

“We can’t stop,” Smith said. “We can’t even see anyone down there — that’s why we blow the whistle the whole way.”