Julie, Rachael and Dustin cooked breakfast. Rachael and Julie had “dippy eggs” and Dustin scrambled. They joked about the big old pan Rachael used to fry one egg at a time. Dustin was flying high after attending his girlfriend’s prom the night before.
Down the block, at June Bugs bar, grandma Jean Goodman was helping with the Mother’s Day breakfast rush.
At about 1:15 p.m., a CSX train hauled through town, as it does at least six times a day.
Dustin, planning to hang out with friends, was just walking across the tracks. Minutes later, he was a statistic: the fourth person hit and the second killed in the past 18 months by a train going through Sutersville.
This blue-collar western Pennsylvania town about 20 miles southeast of Pittsburgh has fewer than 600 people. It is sandwiched between the Youghiogheny River and a major CSX train line. The tracks run through the center, between the main streets — 2nd and 3rd — barely 15 feet from homes and shops, many long abandoned.
“There have been people getting killed on the tracks for as long as I can remember,” John Lyons, mayor and lifelong Sutersville resident, said.
For decades, the town and CSX have had an ongoing debate about who should pay the $175,000 for rails and lights at the town’s three crossings — only one of which has a fully functional rail that goes down when a train comes through. Lyons says the town doesn’t have the money. CSX won’t pay.
“We make an effort to be good neighbors to the railroad. They could also try to be good neighbors,” Lyons said. “They don’t seem to care.”
CSX did not respond to several phone calls.
For the past 18 months, with residents and police saying the accidents have become more frequent, especially when compared to other towns that sit on tracks, the incidents have consumed Sutersville.
In West Newton, for example, another rail town of 2,870 people just four miles away, the last train-related death was in October 2007. There, residents point out, all the crossings have rails and lights.
In all of Pennsylvania in 2008, 47 people were killed by trains. Across the country, 880.
So for little Sutersville, the numbers are high.
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