Cass County crossing where train crashed into semi identified as needing safety upgrade

The Cass County railroad crossing where a train hit a tractor-trailer rig stuck on the track Tuesday afternoon was described in a state transportation department document last year as being in need of safety upgrades.

The Missouri Department of Transportation’s January 2022 Highway-Rail Grade Crossing State Action Plan called the intersection a “humped crossing” and a “potential” crossing upgrade project.

MoDOT spokesperson Linda Horn said Wednesday that the crossing already has lights and gates. When asked if the transportation department had plans to address the steep grade, she said, “I‘m not aware.”

The crash, injuring three members of a Minnesota family, occurred shortly after 4 p.m. near East 187th Street and Holmes Road. The semi was headed east on 187th when it “became high-centered and stalled” on the tracks at the crossing, according to a preliminary investigation by the Missouri Highway Patrol. A southbound train then struck the semi and trailer, the report said.

Prior to the collision, a husband and wife from Minneapolis and their four children, ranging in ages from 6 to 13 years old, were traveling in the semi, said Sgt. Andy Bell, a spokesman for the highway patrol.

A 12-year-old boy was seriously injured in the crash. The 40-year-old mother and an 8-year-old boy suffered minor injuries. The other children and the husband were not injured, Bell said.

The investigation into the crash is continuing, he said, and it was too early to know what, if any, violations or charges could be filed.

Karen Templeton, who has lived near the crossing for 24 years, said she was coming home when she saw the semi and trailer trying to cross the tracks. She saw a man get down out of the cab and immediately thought that he had become stuck.

She pulled up to him and told him that he had to either get the truck off the tracks or call 911 or a number on a nearby building immediately.

“These trains go through here constantly,” she said, adding that an 18-wheeler had been hit a while back and it was totaled. “You don’t want that to happen. I said, ‘You got to do something quick.’”

The man kept saying, “Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus.”

She told him that he needed to call somebody quick.

Then she pulled into her drive and went inside to tell her husband that there was another truck stuck on the tracks. By the time she came back out, the rail crossing lights began flashing.

Realizing that there was a train coming, she went back inside to tell her husband that there was probably going to be another train crash. At that moment, she heard the impact.

“It happened that quick,” she said. It hadn’t even been two minutes.

She didn’t know that there were others inside the cab of the truck at the time of the collision. She heard screaming and when she peeked between the train cars to see what was going on, she saw the other family members injured in the wreck.

Federal Railroad Administration records show the track is operated by Kansas City Southern Railway Co. The crossing has lights and gates, the records say, and 16 trains a day go through the intersection at a maximum speed of 59 mph.

A similar crash occurred at the same crossing on June 2, 2021.

According to the crash report filed by the railroad in that wreck, a westbound tractor-trailer got stuck on the crossing and was struck at 1:45 p.m. by a Kansas City Southern locomotive and two FRA test cars traveling about 50 mph. The trucker, a 34-year-old man, was not in the truck at the time of the crash, it said. Damage to the tractor-trailer rig was $150,000, the report said.

Templeton said the crossing had no lights and gates when she moved there. They were added when a carload of high school students was hit years ago at a nearby crossing.

When the truck was hit in 2021, Templeton said, signs were put up warning of the incline. But she said they really haven’t stopped anybody. She wondered if truckers actually can see them because they sit so low and are close to some trees.

“Once they see those signs, they are pretty much committed to going over the tracks, and a lot of them decide to just go ahead and do it,” Templeton said.

The Star’s Bill Lukitsch provided some information for this story.