Death at the Crossing

In a lament over the decline of the railways, Arlo Guthrie in 1972 sang of the train the City of New Orleans passing "trains that have no name" and "the graveyards of the rusted automobile" while onboard the "magic carpet made of steel" sat "mothers with their babes asleep...rockin' to the gentle beat and the rhythm of the rails is all they feel." The City of New Orleans that left Chicago three minutes behind schedule last Monday night promised prouder vistas as it coursed along the Mississippi: historic Cairo, the blues from Beale Street in Memphis and, as finale, the Big Easy. Mothers continued to rock their babes to the rhythm of the rails, but the magic carpet had become more magical, the rail line revivified. Still, the song's lyrics were about to haunt the train. Especially this one: "All the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream."

About eight miles north of a scheduled stop in Kankakee, Ill., the 14-car City of New Orleans rolled into its nightmare. Looking toward the railway crossing at the town of Bourbonnais, the engineer saw the warning lights flashing, the barriers down--and a truck carrying 20 tons of steel halfway across the tracks. There was no way to stop. The engine plowed into the truck and then proceeded to derail, twisting like a jagged necklace, whipping the cars around and sending an engine straight into the sleeper car.

Just moments before, Sheena Dowe, 22, had left her baby son Amause with a friend in the dining car and taken the friend's toddler to the toilet in the sleeper. When the crash rocked the train, Dowe immediately pushed her friend's son out of the bathroom and screamed at him to run back to his mother. Then the door slammed shut, trapping her within. Meanwhile, as baggage flew and bodies tumbled, June Bonnin, 47, was trying to save her wards. The co-proprietor of an elegant bed-and-breakfast in Nesbit, Miss., was with her daughter Ashley, 8, granddaughter Jessica, 12, and two children of family friends at a slumber party in the sleeper when the collision occurred and fuel from a punctured engine sparked a conflagration. All Bonnin had time to do was grab Ashley and hand her through the window to a cook from the dining car.

Miniatures of horror emerged. Rescuers heard a young girl screaming and then abruptly stop, stilled by death. Meanwhile, another child was found in a ditch, calling for her mother, bleeding from the leg where she had lost a foot.

The driver of the truck was identified as John Stokes, 58, a man with numerous traffic violations, including three speeding tickets received within a year. His license was supposed to have been suspended, but Stokes completed a safety class and won probation. Meanwhile, investigators were looking into evidence that Stokes may have dodged the crossing gates to avoid waiting for the oncoming train. Stokes insists the lights at the crossing did not flash.

Of the 216 people onboard the City of New Orleans, some 120 were injured and 11 perished, including Dowe and Bonnin. For those two, the song's words "halfway home, we'll be there by mornin'" seem particularly heartbreaking. With Dowe died the excitement of a single mom eager to graduate from college in December. Her son turns two in May and cries for his mother. With Bonnin ended a stunning miracle: after six years of prayer and abjuring chemotherapy, she discovered three weeks ago that her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was in remission. "After she'd come this far, it didn't seem right," says Bonnin's son Chris Tickle, 25. "But what I learned during the years she fought her illness, I'll keep with me forever."