EFLAND -- Workers in an office that overlooks the rail crossing where a mother and son died Tuesday in a car-train crash say the warning devices malfunction so frequently that they keep a Norfolk Southern railroad phone number on a sticky note.
But railroad officials say the warning lights and crossing gate have no history of malfunctions; they and state officials said the signals were operating correctly Tuesday. They say the car driven by Erin Brett Lindsay-Calkins of Efland struck and broke the safety gate as she attempted to cross the single track on Mount Willing Road about 10:30 a.m.
Moments later Amtrak's Carolinian crashed into the car, killing Lindsay-Calkins, 26, and her 5-year-old son, Nicholas Lindsay. Bystanders pulled Lindsay-Calkins' 4-month-old daughter, Avan Brooke Lindsay-Calkins, from the wreckage. She was in fair condition Tuesday evening at UNC Hospitals.
The state Highway Patrol said Calkins was driving her Scion east along Forrest Avenue, parallel to the tracks and the eastbound train, and turned right onto Mount Willing Road to cross the tracks.
"The gate was lowering, and her car and the gate collided," said George Young, who manages the state Department of Transportation's rail safety oversight program.
It was the second deadly crash this month at a Triangle rail crossing. Two Durham boys died and their mother was injured Dec. 9 when the Carolinian struck their SUV, apparently trapped between the crossing gates in heavy traffic, on the Ellis Road crossing in Durham.
The Efland crash was being investigated Tuesday by the Federal Railroad Administration, the state DOT Rail Division, Norfolk Southern and Amtrak Police. Investigators interviewed the Carolinian locomotive crew and began reviewing data from a video camera in the locomotive and technical data recorders on the train and at the crossing.
Susan Terpay, a spokeswoman for Norfolk Southern, said the warning lights flashed and the crossing gates lowered into place before the train reached the crossing.
"I talked with one of our signal supervisors who was out there today at this particular crossing," Terpay said. "Right now, all indications are that everything was working properly."
But Caitlyn Holder of Efland, who was driving with her mother nearby and saw the immediate aftermath of the crash, disputed that.
"None of the lights were working," Holder said. "They weren't flashing - which, for this spot, is no surprise. It happens constantly."
Gail Emory and others who work at THD Construction on Mount Willing Road near the crossing say they've called Norfolk Southern dozens of times during the past three years to report erratic behavior by the flashing lights and warning arms that are supposed to keep people out of the path of 12 trains that pass by every day.
Emory said the warning arms are often up when they should be down and vice versa. Occasionally, one will abruptly drop onto the roof of a car passing beneath.
She reports these malfunctions so often, she said, that she made herself a cheat sheet - a sticky note at her desk with the railroad company phone number and the crossing ID number, 735145T.
"We knew someday this was going to happen," Emory said.
Greg Andrews, the company owner, affirmed that workers frequently call Norfolk Southern to report problems with the crossing gate.
"Sometimes the arm just goes up and down with no consistency and no train nearby," Andrews said.
Railroad maintains gate
Norfolk Southern leases the tracks from the N.C. Railroad and is responsible for the crossing signals. Federal railroad safety laws require Norfolk Southern to inspect the crossing signal and gates every month. Terpay said the railroad investigates every report of a malfunctioning signal.
"We are very rigorous in our inspections of all our crossings, and they are done at least monthly. Every single phone call we get is logged and is investigated, and it is recorded how it was resolved," she said.
Terpay said she did not have details about complaints at the crossing but said, "There is not a history of any malfunctions at that crossing."
The east-west train tracks are straight at this stretch; a motorist crossing in either direction can see hundreds of yards down the tracks in both directions, without anything obstructing the view. Railroad officials said the passenger train would have been slowing as it approached a curve with a 55 mph speed limit, but they did not report the exact speed at impact.
It isn't known whether Lindsay-Calkins looked before she drove into the intersection. The train struck her car on the rear right side. The car careened across the intersection and struck a warning light post. Nicholas Lindsay was thrown from the car.
No one was injured aboard the Carolinian, which carried 215 passengers in its northbound trip from Charlotte to New York. The train was delayed for more than two hours after the crash.
Federal investigators are expected to review video images of the crash from a camera mounted on the locomotive and to check Norfolk Southern's inspection records for the crossing signal.
Tuesday's crash was the first at the Mount Willing Road crossing since January 1980, when a driver was injured in a collision with a freight train. The state DOT added crossing gates in the early 1990s and in 2002 installed longer gate arms that cross both lanes of traffic.
The longer arms make it more difficult, but not impossible, to drive around crossing gates. Mount Willing Road serves about 7,000 cars a day, and before Tuesday's crash state officials had no plans for upgrading the warning and protective devices there.
Mother called 'sweet'
Lindsay-Calkins spent a year at Duke University's Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, where she conducted interviews with medical school deans for a study of how spirituality is infused in medical school programs.
She was a driven worker with a sunny disposition, said Harold Koenig, the center's co-director.
"She had a friendly, sweet attitude about her all the time," he said.
Lindsay-Calkins, who left the center earlier this year, had worked hard to balance work with her life as a single mother, Koenig said, and was thrilled to bring her then-fiancé, Michael, to the center's Christmas party last year.
Koenig said he will also remember how dutiful Lindsay-Calkins was about leaving work early enough to collect Nicholas from day care.
"That was such a big priority in her life," Koenig remembered. "Her son was just very important to her. He was just the light of her life."
News researcher Teresa Leonard contributed to this story.
