Around 10:15 p.m. Sunday, McFadden sat parked on Brenner Avenue in her 1993 Nissan at a railroad crossing waiting patiently for a train to pass. Two cars came up behind her and also waited. As crossing arms blocked the cars’ path, red warning lights flashing and the train’s single high beam light came into view, McFadden never imagined what might happen next.

According to Salisbury Police, a 1996 Chevrolet driven by Walter McDowell Jr. approached the waiting line of cars and slammed into the back of a 1998 Jeep driven by Nancy Jean Clifton, 40. The impact pushed Clifton’s Jeep into 43-year-old Richard Kent Bernhardt’s 1987 Audi and the Audi rammed McFadden’s Nissan, pushing her into the path of the oncoming train.

She was surprised that McFadden’s not even sure what she did next.

“It happened so quickly,” she recalls. “I don’t know how I got across, but I did. The car behind me hit me, by no fault of his own, and pushed us onto the tracks. We were just spared.”

McFadden’s reaction to suddenly press the gas and scoot across before her car was struck by the train, was an instinct that possibly saved her life and the lives of her three grandchildren, who were with her in the car, strapped into seat belts.

“Before I could get the car into park again, after crossing the tracks, the train had already passed. It was just that close.”

Today, McFadden’s three grandchildren — Tyrece Crite, 11, Toddrick McFadden, 9, and Courtney McFadden, 8 — remain a little shaken and sore but are doing well after a Monday morning visit to the hospital. McFadden is recovering but says she has severe neck pains where the impact jerked her head back against her car headrest.

McFadden said Sunday’s incident made her realize how blessed they all are.

“There was just no time to think. I don’t know how I thought to mash the gas, but knew to do it,” she says.

McFadden says the estimated damage to her car was $2,078, but there could be no cost put on the lives of her grandchildren or her own.

“I just know it was because of the hand of God that we were spared,” McFadden says. “If that train had hit us, then we would not be here. I’m thankful.”