YOU NEVER HEAR
‘THE ONE THAT HITS YOU |

T.. odd thing about trains is that they're
virtually silent until they go by. A coal train can
make the ground shake for blocks around as it
goes through the Terrace yard, but its approach is
quiet.

_ There is something sinister about anything so
massive that can sneak up and surprise the
unwary, and that surprise was the last experience
of their lives for some people in the history of the
Terrace rail yard. Many others have come close,
and a group of local CN employees testified last
week that the possibility of killing or maiming
someone with a train is every railroader’s secret
horror.

The manner in which Terrace is bisected and
arranged around the railway is proof positive that
cities should not be allowed to grow up without
some sort of minimal planning. For pedestrians
:there are three avenues of passage between the
‘south side and the north: the Sande Overpass, the
Kenney St. level crossing, or a hike through the
seemingly random arrangement of boxcars, loco-
‘motives and equipment in the ON yards. Dodging
‘among the trains, moving and parked, is for
-obvious reasons the preferred choice for many
pedestrians.

Since there is a limit to what the city, the CN
and other bodies in authority can do about the
situation, short of restructuring the entire town,
the CNR has launched a program to protect people
from their own stupidity, working first through
their children, a method proven effective by B.C.
Hydro with their power smart program and the
B.C. Ministry of Environment with their "Green
Team" classroom recycling workshops. Parents get
pestered by their newly educated children and
sometimes actually begin to view things from an
altered perspective.

Milt Mahoney, a veteran CN worker from

Terrace Review — March 6, 1992

Smithers, is coordinating the school program,
assisted by Smithers locomotive engineer Calen
Delain and conductor Don Hall and engineer Al
Harkins of Terrace. They'll be in Terrace class-
rooms most of this month, explaining to primary
and elementary school kids why they should stay
away from the tracks. Mahoney says the program
has been effective so far in other communities,
with the kids doing train safety artwork and
parents writing to express their support of the
program.

The CN and their representatives deserve
credit for the school program, and they have
expressed hope that this sort of consultative
education process can be extended further. Their
concern for public safety and their enlightened
self-interest can and should be used as a resource
by the city for discovering additional safety

- measures that can be put in place in Terrace and

for planning future development that doesn't
encourage further foot traffic through the rail
yard.

It appears that CN wasn’t consulted about the
minor commercial boom on Keith Ave. around the
bus depot, a development that created more
reasons for people to cross the tracks. A sidewalk
on the east side of the overpass would make that
route a more attractive alternative for people on
foot leaving the downtown area, and a joint lobby
involving the city and CN, backed by some of the
alarming statistics and tales that the four student
awareness instructors could present, might per-
suade the Ministry of Highways to take such a
step. It would be an inexpensive project that
would work, something that might appeal to the
provincial government in these grim budgetary
times.

We have to work with what we've got.