Mukilteo Musings

Trains in Seattle

A train traveling 60 mph takes 1.5 miles to stop. I learned this while helping my daughter to review for her driver's test. "One point five miles to STOP" is one of the most deadliest problems we have in the Puget Sound area.

Any map will reveal the train tracks run along the water--Puget Sound--from Seattle through Everett. The tracks move inland South Sound and then return to the water front in Tacoma. When the Mariners games are on TV from Safeco field, the train horns are part of the background noise. Also, along the water exist several gorgeous beach parks--Seattle, North Seattle, Edmonds and Mukilteo. We live on a bluff overlooking the Sound and just below us trains go by on a regular basis. Obviously the trains run along the water because Seattle is a port city and at the turn of the century, it was the most efficient and obvious place to build the tracks. In those days, they didn't seem to care much about view property.

But now, because of the value of water views, houses are perched all along the Sound in expensive residential areas near railroad tracks---and with beach parks. The angriest I have ever been at my son was when he was about 10 and he and a friend placed pennies on the tracks, jumped down into the rocks and waited. Yes, he managed to come home with his trophy flattened penny. He probably still thinks it was worth my wrath because it is on his dresser to this day.

Every year, several people in our area are killed by trains and usually the victims are children or teen agers. Also, the offending train is almost always Amtrak because they are quiet. Kids who think they are immortal assume they will hear a train coming when they are doing stupid things on the tracks; they do hear the freight trains but not killer Amtrak. Last night we were at a friend's house in Seattle. Last year their teen age son was walking along the tracks near a beach park with his friends and his fourteen year old girl friend was....it is too horrible to mention. She did not live and what those kids witnessed is as bad as anything in Iraq.

Some beach parks have elaborate stairs over the tracks for beach access and usually it is a memorial bridge named for a dead child. Other beach parks have the tracks completely accessible as is the case with Mukilteo. June 21 was the last day of school in Mukilteo and the tradition is to go to our local beach park. Both my daughter and my son in separate groups were there. Sure enough, when I picked up my daughter, the aid cars and fire trucks were at the end of the park where the tracks are practically on the beach and the train was stopped. "Where's your brother!!???"

"Mom. don't panic! When I saw the ambulance, I called him and he is not here." We found out later that middle school kids were playing on the tracks and one of them had to be airlifted into Seattle. We don't know the details. All parents in the Puget Sound area worry about this nightmare.

Ironically, Kaley and one of her friends who also lives in a view home were discussing how the trains seem to be sounding their whistles more lately. Their friends were teasing them, "Geez, you guys with the views complaining about the noise. Boo Hoo!" Maybe just maybe the train engineer is trying to save lives because coming around a curve, it takes 1.5 miles to stop.