A person was struck and killed by a train late Tuesday night at a railroad crossing on South 15th Avenue in South Lebanon Township, according to county dispatch. South Lebanon Fire and Police departments were sent to the scene at 11:14 p.m., and the crossing remained closed for hours as investigators worked through the night.
The train involved was operated by Norfolk Southern, and the Lebanon County Coroner’s Office was called to the crossing around midnight, according to LebTown. As of Wednesday morning, the victim’s identity and the specific circumstances of the collision had not been released. CBS 21 reported that further details were unavailable at the time and said it was seeking more information from the coroner’s office.
Crossing Reopened Before Dawn
The South 15th Avenue crossing and the surrounding roadway reopened to traffic early Wednesday morning after investigators cleared the scene, per the same account from CBS 21. Dispatch records indicate the scene was cleared around 5:30 a.m., roughly six hours after the initial call went out. The station’s report did not specify what led investigators to release the roadway at that time.
The crossing sits along Norfolk Southern’s East Penn rail corridor, a high-density freight line that runs through the city of Lebanon and surrounding municipalities, according to local reporting cited by LebTown. That heavy daily freight traffic makes grade crossings and adjacent track areas persistent safety concerns for South Lebanon Township and neighboring communities.
A Recent Pattern of Close Calls
Tuesday’s fatality comes less than three weeks after a near-tragedy in nearby Richland Borough, where firefighters pulled a driver from a stalled truck just 16 seconds before a freight train slammed into the vehicle at a railroad crossing on August 2, according to FOX43. Seventeen members of the Neptune Fire Company responded to that midnight rescue, the outlet reported…