That's a great article! I used to live on a farm that was bordered by train tracks. They were about an acre away from the house, with just a pasture between us. But the tracks were lined on both sides with trees. This was an extremely quiet, very rural area.

In my house, you could only hear the train if everything was totally silent. Even a fan was enough to drown it out unless you had all the windows open, but even with the windows open it would be quite unobtrusive. I was also surprised by a train a few times when working on the pasture fence closest to the tracks, which was literally on my property line and just on the other side of the trees. If it was a bit breezy that day, I'd be restringing electric wire or whatever and then suddenly there's a train screaming past.

And they move faster than people realize. By the time you hear it, if you hear it, it might be too late to do anything. It's not like that bridge scene in Stand By Me where you hear it a long way off and would have plenty of time to get off the tracks.

I definitely find this to be a pretty believable accident.