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NTSB: Rescue engine hit passenger train at 25 mph
6.19 B. 3. 6.27. 9.11. These rules should be considered “commandments” in the GCOR bible.
This almost seems like it would be impossible to happen.
This is where manual flag protection of old should have been used, especially for the direction from which the rescue locomotive was coming. It should have been done by common sense even if not by rule especially since it was known that cell phone communication was not consistent.
Sorry, but there was no excuse for this. Restricted speed is just that. For myself, I’m content to plod along at about 10 mph or so. I have my job, my train and my conductor to protect.
No excuses here. Clear rule violation. This should not have happened. Flag protection would have helped, but if the engineer was speeding… too bad. He is gone!
I fully agree that it is interesting to discover some of the details found in major investigation of the NTSB. But having a decade of my career being what would now being called a first responder investigator, I have found that the NTSB seems to tread too lightly when the fault and causes of accidents leads toward the office managements. With the rescue engine running far in excess of the rules, exceeding 28 mph and crashing at 25 mph, you must wonder and investigate why that freight train crew was so robust. They had a restricted speed on the track which requires that they operate only at a speed sufficient to stop in half the distance of vision of obstruction, and never exceeding 20 mph on clear open track. This line was not clear open track and there was considerable ground leaves on these rails causing a slick rail condition to consider. Why were they going so fast? Were they drug free?
I would sincerely investigate if the dispatcher operated in an entirely incompetent, or maybe criminal manner! When he got the call from the passenger excursion train, and heard that they could not proceed, and agree that they would stay where they stopped, why did he not obtain their exact location and agree by working out with the passenger crew, what would be the safe Mile Post ahead that the recue engine would operate to, and then be flagged and walked to a coupling to the stalled passenger train?
Statements from the rescue engineer indicate that he was not told his destination, the exact location of the stalled train and just told that the track was ‘out of service’. Did the dispatcher encourage an urgent and quick rescue by the freight engines rescue train? Did the dispatcher also suggest that the rescue engine laid down a good coat of sand on the rails as the leaves were a serious problem (an annual event)? When a track is taken ‘out-of-service’ that means only that the dispatcher has no further control, but it must still be under the control of another local person on that line, usual