Snowmachines, trains don't mix

Dan Frerich will tell you there is a saying among railroad men. "All of our rules were written in blood."

Frerich is chief special agent for security for the Alaska Railroad. He and a staff of three agents patrol the railroad's right of way for crimes such as trespassing and vandalism. Those might sound like petty crimes, but Frerich says they could be deadly serious when it comes to running the railroad.

While on a brief tour with newspaper and television reporters Monday, Frerich said he is adding a fourth agent next year. He hopes to impress on Alaskans that riding snowmachines or all-terrain vehicles on or alongside the tracks is too dangerous.

"We patrol the hot spots," Frerich said. He also said his agents are all commissioned officers with the Alaska State Troopers, with one difference -- "We will show up in court for trespassers," he said. The reason for Frerich's seriousness is simple. Trains kill.

Accidents sometimes change the way a railroad works, which is where the rules-written-in-blood axiom comes in. The Alaska Railroad has at least one procedural modification that came about after an accident in which a moose derailed a cargo train, according to Frerich.

The moose was hit and thrown into a switching mechanism so the tracks were switching even as the train was crossing the switch. Now the railroad has a two-stage switching mechanism that employees have dubbed the "moose lock."

Frerich has a decade of experience, and he modifies security patrols accordingly. For example, this year there isn't much snow along the railroad right of way between Portage and Grandview, an area where near misses with snowmachines have occurred in the past but which is sparsely populated. Frerich can have fewer patrols in that area this month, but he knows he will have to send agents there after the first heavy snow.

The Mat-Su area presents different problems -- the population is growing and along with it so is the amount of trespassing. The railroad recently built a new siding so trains can pass each other just north of Wasilla. The land cleared for the project was tracked-up by snowmachines as soon as there was enough snow, and a fence there has been torn down twice. Immediately outside the fence is a tunnel under the railroad, which a person could use to avoid the fenced property.

"They're going out of their way in order to trespass," Frerich said.

Snowmachines have damaged railroad safety sensors that detect off-kilter loads, Frerich said. The sensors are placed along the tracks to prevent dangerous loads from traveling through areas thick with railroad crossings. Without the sensors, the train must stop so workers can personally inspect cargo loads. It's an expensive stop for the railroad, but the alternative could be a train wreck in town, or metal cargo band sticking out from the train and slicing through everything in its path.

No one has been killed while riding a snowmachine on the Alaska Railroad's tracks, but Frerich supplied the media with a list of near misses and alarming accidents.

In 1996, a crumpled snowmachine was struck, caught fire, and ended up burning underneath a locomotive.

Last winter, an Anchorage woman gained brief notoriety after the ski of her snowmachine became stuck on the track.

"She had to actually get off and lift up -- actually, the train took care of that," he said. The rider was seriously injured, although news reports from the incident are mixed as to whether she was running away and hit by a flying snowmachine or was with the machine when the train knocked them both off the tracks.

Like most law enforcement agents, Frerich has adopted education as part of his duties. Railroad agents have visited schools and snowmachine clubs, and plan more visits in the future. The reaction from snowmachiners is a mixed bag, according to Frerich.

"Unfortunately, it's seldom that we give a speech that they want to hear," he said. "We tell them to stay off the tracks and they say, 'We want a trail.'"

Craig Thomas, a board member and treasurer of Mat-Su Motor Mushers, said his organization sponsors rides, works on search-and-rescue operations and does safety education for riders. They also lobby for designated trails. Thomas said teaching the use of proper clothing, helmets and maintenance is simple compared to approaching the problem of trespassing.

"We just remind them that you have to cross at a designated crossing or else it's illegal," Thomas said, "and that doesn't seem to do a lot of good."

Trespassing is an issue for snowmachiners nearly everywhere -- which is all the more reason to ride responsibly, according to Thomas.

"We just try to impress on these kids that nine times out of 10, what they want to do on a snowmobile, they are doing illegally -- riding is a privilege, and probably not a totally legal one. We're trying to make everything as safe as possible, and as legal as possible," Thomas said.