Teenagers were hollering, a radio was blaring and the school bus driver was late when she pulled up to the railroad tracks and looked down the line.
As she crossed the tracks and stopped for a red light, the rear of the bus hanging above the rails, there was no way for the harried driver or the rowdy kids to know that a 620-ton commuter train was speeding toward them at nearly 70 mph.It was over seconds later. The train, whistle blowing and brakes locked, slammed into the bus, tearing the cabin from the chassis and hurling it on the ground, facing the opposite direction.
Seven teenagers were dead or fatally injured; more than two dozen others had injuries. The driver "never knew what hit her," one investigator said, and probably couldn't have avoided the train if she'd seen it.
Details pieced together from investigators, eyewitnesses and students on the bus paint a picture of a tragedy that day that was destined to happen - a horrible combination of bad timing, mal-functioning equipment and dangerous design.
* * * *
At about 6:40 a.m. Wednesday, Charlie Ward pulled his semitrailer truck gravel rig across the double set of railroad tracks on Algonquin Road and inched up to the red light at the intersection with Northwest Highway in downtown Fox River Grove.
In front of him were the four lanes of the highway. Behind him, 46 feet from the lip of the intersection, were the railroad tracks.
Then the crossing bell went off, the red lights flashed and the crossing gates started to drop.
Ward inched his 30-foot rig forward, almost into the steady stream of traffic going by about at 35 mph on the highway, to get as far away from the tracks and the gate as possible. Forget about staying on the stop line - that would leave him in the path of the express train, sticking out 2 1/2 feet from the rail as it blows by.
Finally the green light came and he turned, with the train only a few hundred feet away. Too close, as usual, Ward thought.
"I go across there every morning, and it's the same routine. And I kinda watch, because those lights come on and gates come down, and that train is here."
* * * *
About 30 minutes later, bus driver Patricia Catencamp pulled up to the tracks and prepared to cross over to the spot where Ward had his close call.
Catencamp, a veteran safety official for the Cary-Grove school district's transportation department, was a part-time driver filling in on an unfamiliar route. One of the kids was giving her directions, and she was running late, students said.
But when she got to the tracks, she followed the law - stopping the bus, opening the door, looking and listening for an oncoming train. Nothing.
She crossed the tracks toward the red traffic light and stopped the 38 1/2-foot bus with its nose covering the white stop line. That's a traffic violation, but Catencamp knew she had a long bus.
From where she sat, with the bus slanted down on the slight incline toward the intersection, the rear of the bus may have looked clear of the tracks in the rear view mirror. But the last 3 feet of the bus were not.
If she looked out her left window, west along the gradually rising tracks, her view was obstructed by trees, parked cars and the railroad station a block away.
* * * *
The train tripped sensors 3,080 feet from the intersection as it barreled forward, beginning the process that flashes the warning lights and lowers the crossing gate at the intersection. It's also supposed to start the cycle that changes the traffic light to green for vehicles in the crossing area.
The train didn't have to blow its whistle routinely as it approached because the village had exercised its right to silence the annoying blasts. But the engineer laid on the horn when he saw the bus sticking out in his path. The train was going 69 mph when he hit the brakes, then the emergency brakes.
At that speed he may have needed a mile to stop; he had far less.
* * *
There was chaos - normal chaos - as playful 14- and-15-year-olds shouted and gabbed on the bus. A radio was playing. The rail crossing guard hit the back of the bus, and some students thought that was funny. Then they saw the train. Students screamed; at least one ran forward.
She never recognized the students' warnings, never saw or heard the train grinding toward her, Catencamp told investigators. If she had, the red light in front of her meant she would have had to pull into a near-certain collision with other vehicles to avoid the train.
* * * *
Village Police Chief Robert Polston was at the intersection that morning with an official from the state Department of Transportation. Polston was angry; there'd been numerous complaints by local residents that the lights were too slow, and that the 1990 widening of the highway left too little room for cars. A train had clipped the rear of a pickup truck a month ago. Transportation officials contended the light was working properly.
Polston and the authority watched the lights work as two trains went by without incident. Then the bus pulled up.
* * * *
At best, 20 seconds elapsed between the time the train tripped the sensor and it smashed the back 3 feet of the bus at 7:11 a.m.
"As the train went flying by us you could see the bus bouncing," said Jim Homola, who was sitting in his pickup truck behind the bus and across the tracks.
He ran to the battered cabin of the bus, saw bleeding children lying in the grass, not moving. He saw more bodies in the wreckage and helped kids who could move get off the bus.
One student said the bus driver tried to radio for help after the crash, then opened the still-working-door to let kids off.
"The bus driver came around to the back of the bus and saw the kids and just started screaming `Oh my God!"' Homola said.
"I saw her face, and she was going `Oh my God! Oh my God!" and crying."