Eleven months before a rail-crossing accident took the lives of a Henrietta, New York couple, federal regulators warned CSX Transportation that it was inadequately responding to crossing problems.

After reviewing CSX maintenance records, inspectors from the Federal Railroad Administration found nearly 1,900 instances in the northeastern United States in which crossings had malfunctioned the previous year.

Those included dozens of instances in upstate New York in which CSX had failed to document whether it had responded to those malfunctions promptly and properly.

The agency told CSX officials "all malfunctions should be taken seriously."

Despite that admonition, the South Winton Road crossing experienced chronic equipment malfunctions. They set the stage for a train-car crash that killed John and Jean O'Connor on Feb. 3.

Now, the FRA is considering how to discipline CSX for the accident, with monetary fines.

The agency will not disclose the size of the fines it is considering. Whatever the amount, it likely won't be large enough to affect CSX's bottom line. The FRA, a tiny agency trying to regulate a gigantic industry, consistently cites railroads for a relatively small number of violations each year and levies fines of a few thousand dollars for most violations.

"It certainly isn't comforting to know they're not going to be fined very much. Personally, I find it disgusting," said Maria Hellenschmidt, an O'Connor family friend who has researched FRA's enforcement practices since the accident. "You'd think the fines would make them (CSX) change things or fix things. But if they just get these little slaps on the wrist, what would inspire them to change?"

Railroads are inherently dangerous, as evidenced by the Thursday accident in which two men died while walking on CSX tracks in Fairport.

But it was the Feb. 3 accident in Henrietta, in which crossing protective systems failed to safeguard motorists, that focused attention on CSX and the FRA's efforts to regulate it.

The agency's approach to enforcement has come under fire this year after several high-profile accidents and media reports that prompted the federal Transportation Department's inspector general to launch an investigation into how the agency handles highway crossing inspections and accidents.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer also is investigating CSX's crossing-maintenance program.

But FRA officials say they're on the right track, citing a decade-long decline in the number of train and crossing accidents. "Our estimation is, despite rather significant increases in rail traffic, things are improving," said Warren Flatau, an FRA spokesman. The agency has moved to a system that makes railroads more responsible for solving problems, and the FRA has backed that up with increases in the number of inspections and monetary fines.

George A. Gavalla, who headed the agency's safety programs until earlier this year, said he stressed a more cooperative approach in which the FRA, the railroads and their employees partnered to advance safety.

That system worked well enough