NewsCenter 5's Janet Wu reported Wednesday that a train tragedy last month in Woburn, Mass., left two rail workers dead. It was the third fatal accident in as many years. The train headed for Boston crashed into workers on the track.
Passengers, management and the public were stunned, but not those who walk the tracks every day.
"We knew it was coming. Something was going to happen," Dick McTague said.
"I've sat at many meetings with these people and told them they were going to kill more," one rail worker said.
"That Woburn incident could well have derailed 100 commuters just as easily as it killed those men," said attorney Doug Sheff.
While the investigation into Woburn continues, workers said there is a common thread that ties this to previous fatalities.
Bobby McTague was removing snow in a blinding storm three years ago when a freight train killed him instantly.
"They didn't have enough men on the job. Clearly, the snow had gotten out of hand. They didn't have a proper lookout. Should have had two lookouts. They should have had two or three guys clearing snow," Dick McTague said.
But Bobby McTague was the only lookout, and according to a Federal Railroad Administration report, his foreman ordered him to remove snow when the train came around the bend in the blinding storm.
"If the foreman instructs them to do something unsafe, their obligation is not to follow that direction and basically report that situation to a supervisor," Masschusetts Bay Commuter Railroad General Manager Jim O'Leary said.
Last summer, Joseph Gilraine, 36, was crushed between two pieces of heavy machinery as he was replacing railway ties in Gloucester, Mass. His co-workers said he was getting in and out of a swing loader to move equipment -- a job that should have been done by two people.
"If safety measures are put in place where you do not rely on one individual and worry whether there is an error in a computer system, then you will prevent a death," said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, of Mass COSH.
"If you add more regulations to each fatality but the rules are ignored to save time and money, it really doesn't get you anywhere," Wu said.
"Fundamental to safe operation in the railroad or any other industry is personal responsibility. Despite the best systems, the most redundancy in the system, if you have personal failure it is difficult to protect against," O'Leary said.
But workers insist there is one theme that ties these three seemingly different accidents: A culture of ignoring safety regulations.
"You're encouraged to actually, at times, without someone giving you in writing, ignore this safety rule, you know, you get questions. 'What are you doing that for? We don't have time for that. We're not going to put an extra guy or an extra watchman,'" said Jim Teague, of the Brotherhood of Maintenance Way.
"The problem is that often when there is a fatality, people will immediately look at the human error. But when you've got a pattern, it's like a bad science experiment. You are repeating the same dangerous situation. You're going to end up with a deadly outcome," Goldstein-Gelb said.
"This is not just an issue isolated to workers. It's an issue for all of us who ride public transit," said Sheff, Bobby McTague's attorney.
"As the safety of the rail worker continues to decline, the safety of the riding public is going to continue to decline. We were lucky in that regard in Woburn," Dick McTague said.
"Four of your workers killed in three years. You do not think that statistic is worrisome?" Wu asked.
"Totally unacceptable, totally unacceptable," O'Leary said. "This kind of accident should not have happened and hopefully will never happen again, and we'll do everything in our power to see that it doesn't happen again."