NEWPORT -- Police credit a little luck and some quick thinking for allowing an Etna woman to walk away after her car hit a moving freight train on Friday.

Carrie Carter, 66, was not injured in the crash at the Palmer Road crossing.

"She was lucky -- very, very lucky," said Newport Police Chief Leonard Macdaid.

Carter, a self-employed house cleaner, was on her way to work when she approached the unlighted crossing a little after 9 a.m. as snow and mixed precipitation began.

The train was obscured by a bend in the tracks near the intersection, Carter said. The first time she saw the train was when a pickup truck raced through the crossing, missing a collision by a couple of feet.

"I thought they were going to hit," Carter said. "The young fella on the train with the engineer thought it was going to too."

The next thing Carter knew her 2001 four-door Chevy was sliding into the side of the engine at the front of the train.

Her car had nearly stopped when the impact occurred.

"I had applied my brake because I always stop at the rail road crossing and I just kept sliding," Carter said.

The train, too, was traveling very slowly through the intersection, Macdaid said. That gave Carter time to pull her car away before it was dragged down the tracks.

"I didn't have time to be scared," she said. "When I heard it hit me I put (the car) in reverse and backed away. I don't know how I thought to do that. All I could see was myself going down the track."

Officer Kevin Wintle of the Newport Police said the quick decision may have spared Carter serious injury, or worse.

"It would have hauled her down the tracks," he said. "By the time (the train) stopped it was probably 500 or 600 yards down the tracks."

The Boston & Maine Railroad Police Department issued a summons charging Carter with a crossing violation. She intends to appeal the $165 fine.

A call to Pan Am Railways, which owns the train, was not returned on Tuesday.

The locomotive was not damaged, Wintle said.

Carter's car sustained about $2,500 damage to the front end, but she was able to drive it home. She made it to work later that day.

Carter is feeling no lingering effects from the accident, but her friends have given her a new nickname.

"They just call me choo choo for short," she said.

Craig Crosby -- 487-3288

ccrosby@centralmaine.com