Work Starts at Deadly Railroad Crossing

Alane Sherman lives just a few hundred feet from the crossing on Hempstead county road 189. "Real dangerous...real dangerous," Sherman says while standing in her front yard. She`ll never forget the day when her sister called for an ambulance. Three EMT`s responded to the scene last February. As they left for the hospital, their vehicle was struck by a train. All three died. Wednesday morning construction crews began the first stage of setting up a mechanical gate. Some residents wonder why it`s taken so long. "My thoughts are they should have fixed it a long time ago. If they would proceeded when we told them, there would have at least been three lives saved," a local resident Richard Ford said. Ford travels the road everyday. He thinks the crossing doesn`t give drivers enough warning that a train is coming. "A lot of times you can come down and can`t hear the train. You have to be up on the tracks to see the train." Officials with Union Pacific say when finished warning lights and crossing barriers will alert motorists that a train is approaching. Although, the safety upgrades do come at a price. The renvoation is esitmated to be 200 thousand dollars. But that`s money well spent according to these residents.