The Acela this week racked up some scary stats: one man dead, one dog dead, three seriously injured.

Yesterday, a train traveling from D.C. to Boston hit a woman in Connecticut walking her dog on the tracks, killing the dog and nearly taking off her arm. She says she heard the train, but thought it was on another track.

The day before, an Acela D.C.-to-Boston, reportedly traveling under the 55 mph limit in Providence, R.I., hit three workers inspecting the tracks, killing one of them.

“It’s a blind spot,” Richard Bonafiglia, an employee of the Cadillac Lounge, which is near the site of the accident in Providence, told the Boston Globe.

“You can’t hear those trains; they’re electric,” he said. “It takes only a second….It’s a freak accident.”

The NTSB is investigating Wednesday’s accident, and will look at the speed of the train, if the brakes were used properly, and if the train blew a warning whistle, according to a spokesperson.

On my daily MARC train trip to Baltimore last Tuesday evening, I fell into a head-hanging, drooling sleep so deep I nearly missed my station. By the time I reached home, the fever was on, and I was deep into my worst flu bout since elementary school.

Like a good worker, I called in sick on Wednesday, Thursday, and again on Friday, to spare my coworkers from my germs. After six days, countless cups of ginger tea, a quarter bottle of Tylenol, and the second season of The Wire, I was back on the MARC Monday morning, hoping I wouldn’t spook my fellow commuters with a coughing fit.

I shouldn’t have worried. Although I did let out a few raspy coughs into my handkerchief, the final notes of my sickness were nothing compared to sniffling, sneezing, and full-on hacking of many other riders. A bearded man a few rows ahead of me coughed for so long, I feared he would pass out. The train car rang with sickness all the way to D.C.

It’s going to be a long, germy winter for commuters. Have the rules changed and it’s now all right to go to work with a serious cold or even the flu? If so, I propose we follow certain Asian countries where the polite person with a cold covers his mouth in public with a hospital mask. At least on the MARC train.

Mike Benson, principal owner of Café Saint-Ex and sister eats-outlet Bar Pilar, is just a few weeks away from opening his latest restaurant—three vintage railroad cars, plus a depot, that will be transformed into an establishment called Southern Rail. You say you haven’t heard a word about it? Well, for good reason: It’s in Carrboro, N.C., just outside Chapel Hill, where Benson was born and still has a home.

Talking via phone from the Southern Rail construction site as he waited on $75,000 worth of steel, Benson said the 5,000-square-foot project rests between two operating Norfolk Southern railroad lines. Just as I was starting to ask him how the hell people reach the place—I was imagining slick, dangerous, perfectly timed rolls between moving rail-car wheels, like Sinatra in Von Ryan’s Express—Benson clarified: “One of the live tracks goes part of the way down, and then there’s a parking lot.”

Southern Rail will be the Triangle’s answer to Café Saint-Ex, Benson says, serving up a similar menu of seasonal American favorites. The depot will become a coffee house, while the two turn-of-the-century Pullman cars and the caboose are being gutted and renovated into a kitchen, prep area, dish room, and a dining room. There will also be a platform between the cars and, according to the Carrboro Commons [PDF], a “steel awning over the three railcars, which would make it appear as if the railcars are in a vintage train station.”

And before you start snickering about Benson’s fascination with transportation—Saint-Ex has an aviation theme, and Bar Pilar a nautical one—the owner would like you to know he’s fully aware that he’s a target for stupid jokes. “People have been asking me, ‘What would your next theme be?” says Benson. “Hmmm, maybe a space ship?”