SURVIVORS BAND TOGETHER IN WAKE OF TRAIN CRASH.

Byline: Carey Goldberg The New York Times

George Burger, a 43-year-old actuary, went to work Friday.

This may not sound like much, but the fact that his commute began in Fair Lawn, N.J., at 8:08 a.m. in the first car of Train 1254 and actually ended in Manhattan made him one of the luckiest of the lucky among the hundreds of passengers aboard two trains that smashed into each other in Jersey City.

Burger became a member of a sudden fraternity of fortunate commuters Friday, shaken up but self-possessed enough to inspect one another for injuries, proffer cigarettes and share the greatest gift of all: use of a cellular phone.

Minutes after clambering out of their train cars - or while waiting edgily in their seats for instructions from rescue workers who had told them to stay put - many survivors already were phoning ahead to deliver bad-news/good-news reports that they would be late to work, late home, but were blessedly unhurt.

It was the most terrifying commute ever, but for many, it could have been even worse.

"I'm a trouper," Burger said of his decision to continue on to his insurance office at the World Trade Center, where, in 1993, he made it through the terrorist bombing.

Many of his unhurt fellow passengers turned into troupers as well, becoming solicitous of one another as soon as the shock of the crash had passed.

"The cell phones and cigarettes were good giveaways," said Laurie Winters, who had been on her way in to her job as assistant to the vice president of Loral Corp., a defense contractor, when the trains collided. "That was going on all over."

A woman sitting near her had offered free use of her cellular phone, Winters said, so she had gratefully called her boyfriend to say she was all right. Others were calling family and employers to report on their plight, CNN-style.

Barbara Clyne, a law librarian at the Manhattan firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, said: "Everyone was very, very polite and helpful. I thought they were amazingly calm. They knew right away something terrible had happened."

Clyne's journey to work turned into a tortuous road of stops and starts that took until noon, but she got there - by waiting endless minutes for instructions from rescuers, walking a distance to a nearby road, waiting with an impatient crowd for buses to Hoboken, and taking the ferry into the city.

As she and the other survivors traveled, she said, some read the paper to calm themselves, and others chattered to relieve the tension. Though almost no one gave in to hysterics, jarred nerves prompted several to return home to recover, or to decide that they would end the workday early.

"It was really scary out there, I'll tell you," Clyne said. "I'll leave work early today."

Burger said Friday afternoon that he would work a full day but that he was beginning to worry that his back and shoulders might have been injured, and would have them checked. He said he did not mind all the attention lavished on him at work, but added: "When people are saying, 'Boy, you must feel lucky to survive,' and so forth, my comment is, 'I would have been luckier not to be on that train.' "

The crash made many survivors take a fresh look at ingrained commuting habits, which often extend to daily choice of seats. Friday, such choices determined which riders were badly hurt and which escaped uninjured.

"People are creatures of habit," said Richard Rosenthal of Ridgewood, who had been riding in his customary seat in the second-to-last car. "You ask any commuter, they have their favorite seats they always sit in. Everybody at the scene was asking everybody, 'Which car were you in? Which car were you in?' "

Winters said she was still struggling to understand her own luck - the spontaneous decision that morning to sit in the second car, which sustained little damage, instead of the first car, which took the brunt of the crash.

"It's just scary," she said, "because I always sit in the first car. So when it happened it made me say, 'What made me sit in the second car today?' My angel, I guess. Because the people in the first car were hurt pretty bad."

Burger, now a veteran of the Secaucus crash and the World Trade Center bombing, said that as an actuary, he should be able to compute the probability of being involved in two disasters within three years.

"If you live in the New York area," he said, "it's probably pretty high. Every couple of years or so it's something."