Bar patrons save stranded car from train

By Lauren Radomski (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, April 29, 2008

It was supposed to be a quiet Saturday night for Judy Selander, her three daughters and a daughter’s friend.

The group had braved the weekend weather to attend the Grand March at the New York Mills High School prom and were back on the road again just before 9 p.m. It was on that ride home, as Selander crossed the railroad tracks at South Walker Ave., that something went wrong: Her car got stuck.

“Just as I crossed the tracks the ice heaved up really bad,” she said, explaining that snow had built up on the tracks, creating large ruts.

“My first instinct was to look and see if a train was coming either way,” she said, “and that’s when I saw the train was coming really fast.”

That eastbound train was less than a mile away, Selander said. She told her passengers to get out of the car and run away from the tracks. One of Selander’s teenage daughters ran across the street to Mills Liquors, where Angela Slatau was at work.

“Some girl came in just frantic,” Slatau said. The girl was obviously upset, she said, but it took a few minutes before Slatau and others in the bar understood a train was involved.

“She couldn’t even spit it out,” Slatau said.

Slatau joined five to seven patrons in running from the bar toward the tracks. Slatau said she turned back to call the authorities from inside the bar, only to realize the railroad crossing lights were already flashing.

Meanwhile, the group of patrons arrived at the car. One of them got in the vehicle, Selander said, and the group began to rock the car back and forth, finally unlodging it from the tracks.

By this time, Slatau had joined the group near the tracks. Just as the car started to move from the crossing, one of the men involved fell. The train was approaching so quickly, Slatau said, that she couldn’t tell how close it was to hitting him.

“At that point I thought both him and the car were going to get hit,” she said.

But it didn’t. The group pushed the car to one side of the tracks and waited from the other side as the train passed by.

Officer Joey Rud of the New York Mills Police Department had arrived on the scene in time to see the group rushing toward the tracks. He estimated there were 10 seconds between the time the helpers cleared the tracks and when the train barreled through. While the train slowed as it approached the South Walker crossing, he said, the caboose had reached the intersection by the time it came to a halt.

The whole incident happened so quickly, Rud said, that the actions of the bar patrons in the minutes prior to his arrival made all the difference.

“Thank goodness for concerned citizens,” he said.

Selander said she thanked her helpers before getting back in the car with her girls and continuing home.

“I didn’t think they were going to get it out, but they did,” she said. “I was just happy that everybody was safe and it was done with.”

The group from the bar returned to Mills Liquors, Slatau said, and within 15 minutes, heard word of another vehicle stuck on the tracks. The same group returned to help the second vehicle free, she said, before blocking the crossing with a truck so no other cars could approach the tracks.

According to the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Department, the tracks were later cleared by a city worker.