RAIL-SAFETY BILL WOULD PUSH WHISTLE-AT-TRESTLE RULES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 3, 1993                   TAG: 9302030224
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
RAIL-SAFETY BILL WOULD PUSH WHISTLE-AT-TRESTLE RULES
The August deaths of two Henry County teen-agers on a railroad trestle has prompted a General Assembly move that could require trains to blow whistles at certain bridges and trestles.
Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Martinsville, sponsored the bill that would allow localities to require engineers to blow their trains' whistles on trestles 100 feet or longer.
Charles Barker, 13, and Earl Adams Jr., 14, were killed Aug. 16 on a 431-foot Norfolk Southern Corp. trestle south of Martinsville.
The teen-agers' mothers, who were in Richmond this week at a committee hearing on the proposed law, have filed multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the railroad.
"I think it was a tragedy what happened down here on this trestle," Armstrong said. "It was not my intent to try to punish Norfolk Southern in some way. I was just trying to save lives in the future."
Norfolk Southern Corp. officials said they will not oppose the measure. Armstrong said CSX Corp. officials worked with him to make the bill more acceptable to railroads.
Initially, Armstrong wanted to require the railroads to sound whistles at all 100-foot or longer trestles. Railroad officials, he said, encouraged letting localities designate at which bridges or trestles the horns should blow.
"Certainly, local governments should know which bridges and trestles are the offenders," Armstrong said.
The proposed legislation cleared the House Roads and Internal Navigation Committee on Tuesday. The full House could vote on it as early as Friday.
However, if the legislation is enacted, it could open a debate over whether Virginia's towns, cities and counties - through the General Assembly - can regulate the railroads.
Federal courts traditionally have left regulating the railroads up to the Federal Railroad Administration, the Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration.
Bruce Wingo, resident vice president for Norfolk Southern, said the General Assembly measure could affect 400 trestles and bridges in the company's Virginia system.
The bill follows a controversy that began last fall after an internal Norfolk Southern memo was attached to one of the mother's lawsuits.
That memo, written by the railroad's chief attorney, Wiley F. Mitchell Jr., suggested that the railroad knew that blowing whistles at trestles should reduce accidents. But Mitchell warned Norfolk Southern that the failure to sound warnings after such a policy is established would make the company even more vulnerable to lawsuits.
The legislation, Mitchell said, ignores the real cause of trestle deaths - trespassers.
"Any approach which is directed primarily at railroad operators, and which ignores the very real problems railroads have in trying to keep trespassers off their property, is not likely to be a final solution," Mitchell said.
If approved, the legislation would place the railroads in the peculiar position of being banned from blowing train whistles in some towns and required to blow them in others.
Roanoke, Salem, Vinton and many other localities have whistle-ban ordinances to prevent train whistles from waking residents.
One railroad official suggested that Armstrong's proposal has at least one good aspect. If a town's residents complained about a train whistle waking them at 3 a.m., the town council - not the railroad - would be responsible.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB