33-year-old Kristy J. Willis is dead, her daugher Kelsey hospitalized, but miraculously two teens live to tell their story.

  The truck all four were riding in late Friday afternoon was struck by a train.

  It happened between Fordland and Diggins, just off US 60 near Route A.

  "It's a horrible thing, and I'll never forget it."

  15-year-old Tiffany Bowden and her 17-year-old brother Carl almost weren't around to remember.

  "For no particular reason I looked in his direction. If I hadn't, we both may not be here," Tiffany says.

   The pair were hitching a ride in their neighbor's pick-up truck bed from the school bus stop along US 60 to their house on Greenbriar.

  When Tiffany looked at Carl she didn't see her brother.

  She saw a train, seconds from hitting the truck straddling the tracks.

  "I yell 'stop, stop!'  Me and Carl jump out just in time. I roll towards the grass and Carl landed on his feet," she tells us.

  But their neighbors, a mother and her 8-year-old daughter, were still inside.

  That's when these kids had to do a very grown-up thing.

  "I seen someone crying, muffled though. So I jerked open the door as best I could and it finally came loose," Carl remembers.

  Carl lifted his little neighbor from the passenger side of the crushed vehicle.

  "I grabbed her as best I could, without moving her neck."

  His sister consoled her until paramedics arrived.

  "The worst thing for me was holding that little girl in my arms, and she kept asking for her mom."

  The driver Kristy Willis, who didn't make it.

  "We could see her breathing but it was too late," Carl explains.

  The siblings say the trains that cross Greenbriar Drive are so common, they're almost invisible.

  The road is private, which means flashing lights and crossing bars are not required.

  In fact all that warns drivers of the possibility of an approaching train is a stop sign.

  "Sometimes they blow the whistle- you hear."

  But Nan Caldwell, who lives just up the road from the Bowdens, says you have to make a conscious effort to see.

  "You have to stop and look both ways cause it sneaks up on you- you don't realize it."

  Even though Tiffany's realization saved her brother's life, these two teens are facing a much harsher realization Friday night.

  "I suppose it would be a good feeling and I might look back on it and think that, but right now I just can't get over the fact that if only I would have seen it earlier she would still be alive."