At least 5 hurt when train hits another at Union Station
Emergency vehicles stage at Adams and Canal after train strike at Union Station. (Scott Kleinberg/Tribune)
9:20 a.m. CDT, June 3, 2011
At least five people have been taken to hospitals after a Metra train and an Amtrak train were involved in a low-speed collision at Union Station this morning, a Fire Department spokesman said.
An Emergency Medical Services Plan 2 was called around 8:30 a.m., sending at least 10 ambulances to the scene. The accident happened at the south end of the station, between tracks 2 and 4, Metra officials said.
An inbound express Metra Burlington Northern train No. 1242 from Aurora coming into Union Station on Track 2 hit a stopped train, said passenger Kirk Musselman. He estimated the Metra train was going about 5 mph.
“There were blown widows, blown glass” on his car, which was the fourth or fifth car back on the train, he said. He said the corner of his car and perhaps one or two others hit the parked trai
The Amtrak train struck was a southbound CHI-Carbondale train, #391, the Saluki.
Still delays for evening rush. Fortunately this was low speed and nobody was seriously hurt. Just another in what seems like a lot of accidents lately. edblysard seems to think the numbers are small compared to the number of daily/yearly trains (on the rear end accident thread). What would be an interesting stat is comparing accident rates per train run by year, by railroad and across several other nations.
The FRA website has a lot of yearly accident statistics by railroad, as well as reports on specific incidents: http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/ I have never seen any comparative stats. However, you could get a rough idea by comparing annual ton-miles-per-railroad with the number of total accidents. Even then, not all accidents are of the same type or magnitude.
Thanks for the info. As i stated on another thread, accidents per million train miles or even worse, per ton-miles, distorts the prevalence of accidents, and favors long haul freights on Western lines, especially ones with heavy tonnage in tow. To some extent, the tonnage and even distance of a given run are irrelevant.
A train mile is a train mile, no matter the territory and each mile has equivalent dangers associated with it. The two most recent incidents we have been discussing occurred on relatively speaking ‘wide open territory’ where miles can accrue quickly.
Yes and to some (only some, mind you) extent a train run 40 miles is equivalent to one run 1000 miles (the two trains involved in this collision). If some type of “incident” occurs on both, the one running 1000 miles appears safer than the first, if you only use the accidents per million train-miles statistic. We know it was not and thus the statistic is a bit misleading. That is why I think having both statistics would be helpful.
