OGDEN -- A Farr West man made a wrong turn off Second Street onto the railroad tracks, but he made the right decision seconds later when he saw train lights in his rearview mirror.
Danny Ray Olsen, 62, jumped out of his car to safety just before the blue 1998 Nissan Sentra was nearly obliterated by a FrontRunner passenger train headed north from Ogden to Pleasant View on Union Pacific tracks. No one on the nearly empty train was injured.
"A big diesel engine like that versus a car is like a personal car versus a can of soda," UTA spokesman Gerry Carpenter said.
Olsen said he doesn't normally drive down Second Street to get home from work, but he was looking for a gas station.
"I turned on the track. I thought I was on that road there (530 West) and I wasn't," Olsen said. Instead, his right turn drove him off the concrete ledge of the railroad crossing and left his Sentra high-centered between two sets of tracks.
"I tried to get the car off the tracks and it was stuck, it wouldn't go," Olsen said. "I looked in the mirror and I saw a light behind me and I said, 'Man, I'm getting out of here.' That train was moving."
Carpenter said the FrontRunner operator reported that he was traveling about 55 miles per hour when he hit the emergency brake before the vehicle was struck and pushed 325 feet along the track, more than the length of a football field.
"Even if (the operator) threw the brakes the second he saw it, there's no way even in emergency braking he could stop before making contact with the vehicle," Carpenter said.
Olsen called Ogden Police to report his predicament just prior to the wreck, Carpenter said. Officers were responding as they heard the report that the car had been hit.
The FrontRunner was traveling on the west track, the main line, when it hit Olsen's Sentra and finally shoved it to the east side of the tracks.
Damage to the train engine was largely cosmetic, Carpenter said, likely limited to the snow plow and access ladder. The engine was being taken back to the Ogden yard to be examined before returning to Salt Lake.
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