It's tempting to write it off as "kids being stupid". But we should not be lead into thinking we couldn't have done more.
I'm of two minds on this.
I'll start with:
1) Its important to value life and not be cavalier and show a sense of empathy.
2)In urban areas where risks of intrusion are numerically more likely and train movements more frequent, there is certainly an argument for fencing corridor access; that said, chain link fences in Toronto blocking popular access routes across tracks are cut with regularity; just ask CP about trying to keep up with that activity in Leaside, where people, not just kids, want to cut across the ROW from the homes to get to Crothers Woods and the hiking/biking trails, and/or the Loblaws, its a massive shortcut.
If you're going to do it, you need to prevent that with non-scalable, 10ft fences that are very hard to cut (metal/composite faux wrought-iron style would be the recommendation) but that's quite expensive and there's a lot of track.
Its inconceivable to control for access in more rural areas and indeed, where the railways balk at intrusion in Toronto, the Bruce Trail runs directly across and along side rail corridors at times. (briefly)
3) Education is almost always a good idea, but also almost always a challenge. Try telling parents we're going to teach your kid the safest way to do drugs, with the strong recommendation that they don't do them at all. Try telling many parents about detailed sex-ed at a relatively young age, get the same issue. Yet, the limited-scope, 'never do the bad thing' message; or wait til you're an adult is a non-starter.
Now I offered than intro to suggest, do you want to teach kids how to walk along a rail corridor safely? How would the railways feel about "You shouldn't trespass, but if you're going to do it, this is how"?
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I offer the above in service of, when I've been in a rural area, usually on a hiking trail, and had to follow rail for a bit, I learned a long time ago to not only check both ways properly and stick to the side if feasible, but before stepping between the rails, put your ear to the rail. The vibration of an oncoming train can be heard literally 15x further than listing for the sound of a train traveling through air. It can give you a very clear indication of whether its safe to traverse a trestle that will take 2 minutes to get across.
Its also a great idea to be a train geek and get the scheduled runs; or gain access to real-time tracking of runs on your phone, though such is no guarantee of a safe crossing, as there is always the risk of unscheduled/untracked runs, work equipment etc.
But can I imagine anyone explaining that to a class of teens/pre-teens w/the railways blessing?
4) Finally, I would note the specific issue described here seems to be that the teens may have seen one train coming and in an effort to avoid it they stepped from the track they knew was active, to one w/an oncoming UPX vehicle they did not see coming. This is a common feature in train/trespasser collisions that are not suicides. Here again is there a sensible instruction to give? In a two-track scenario, the obvious thing to say is always step to the side of the active track, not to the opposing track (assuming that's feasible). But if you're walking down the middle of 3 tracks or 4 tracks etc. Other than.....don't do that, I can't think of clear advice on the lowest risk option if you see a train coming, do you step to the left or the right?
In theory, properly positioned, you probably have room to stand between 2 moving trains, but not much (approximately 2.5ft, assuming neither train has a wide load, and there is no shaking/shifting at all) , and I would not recommend anyone try.
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In the end one must have empathy for both the kids and the parents here. But I'm not sure there are any 'easy' solutions.
