Amtrak train crash mirrors Chester history

The crash of Amtrak train 89 Sunday is still under investigation, but it has already raised questions about what kind of backup precautions could, or should, have been in place to prevent the deaths of two workers killed when the train hit a backhoe on the tracks. In a story today, it's shown that problems with communications between workers and dispatchers, and the need for safety backups, have been on the radar of federal authorities for some time. What's interesting is that 28 years ago at nearly the exact same spot, just south of Highland Avenue Station, a similar train crash happened. In that case a dispatcher was found to be under the influence of drugs, but the same kinds of conversations played out then as are happening now. I thought it was worth sharing colleague Michael Matza's coverage of the story, that highlights some of the ways history is repeating itself.

By Michael Matza, Inquirer Staff Writer

The resignation Wednesday of the Amtrak switchman who caused last month's crash between a passenger train and a maintenance vehicle in Chester revived a controversial question about railroad safety.

Is a mechanical backup system of questionable reliability better than no backup system at all?

In his testimony to the National Transportation Safety Board earlier this month, Thomas Connor, 30, an Amtrak employee since 1980, said he accidentally switched a Washington-to-Boston train traveling 90 m.p.h. onto a track occupied by a slow-moving maintenance vehicle.

The toll: 25 passengers injured, one 15-ton ballast regulator mangled beyond recognition, and $3 million in damage to equipment and track.

Had the two workers aboard the roadbed-leveling vehicle not jumped to safety at the last minute, officials said, they almost certainly would have been killed.

"It is beyond question that the means were available to Amtrak to install a fail-safe system which would operate to prevent a derailment even assuming all the other factors in this case," Connor's attorney wrote in a letter accompanying the announcement of his client's resignation.

Followers of the accident investigation, and of rail-safety issues, understood the reference immediately.

The "fail-safe" system referred to would allow railroad maintenance vehicles to, in effect, create buffer zones front and back as they move down the track. This is done electrically and is called "shunting. "

And the controversy concerning whether to shunt relatively lightweight vehicles - such as the 15-ton ballast regulator involved in the Jan. 29 crash - is central to debates taking place in Congress concerning pending rail- safety legislation, and around bargaining tables where railroad-company managers and union negotiators meet.

First, some technical background:

A weak electrical current passes continuously through all steel rails. When a locomotive operates over the rails, a steel pickup bar in front of its wheels contacts the rails and completes an electrical circuit. The circuit sends a pulse through the signaling system. As the train passes by, the wayside signals behind the train electronically drop to the "stop" position, indicating to dispatchers, switchmen and locomotive engineers that a given section of track is occupied.

But at one-tenth the weight of a locomotive, a ballast regulator "will complete that circuit only sometimes," said Amtrak spokesman John Jacobsen in an interview after several Amtrak workers told the National Transportation Safety Board that shunting might have prevented the recent crash.

It "might complete (the circuit) three-quarters of the time if the rails have a lot of activity over them and are real smooth and polished," Jacobsen said. "But it lacks the weight to put enough pressure on the rails to shunt all the time. "

As a result, he said, Amtrak "decided a long time ago not to allow equipment which doesn't shunt consistently to shunt at all," and manufacturers were instructed to insulate the undercarriages of maintenance vehicles so they simply cannot shunt.

"The only way to be 100 percent reliable is to take the track out of service and put a blocking device on the switch so no one can put it back in service without a dispatcher's order," Jacobsen said.

"We do not agree that any shunting is better than none. We don't want people to have a false sense of security. Lives are at stake out there. You don't want the Connors of this world thinking, 'It doesn't matter if I screw up because there's something to back me up,' " Jacobsen said.

"That is the most asinine position" these people have ever taken, said William Hauselieter, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the union that represents Amtrak's 1,300 engineers and firemen.

Hauselieter said switchman Connor was "absolutely, positively correct" when he said shunting might have prevented the Chester wreck.

"The currents that run through the rails send a code that tells me what is up ahead," Hauselieter explained. "The absence of the code (trips) signals in the cab that tell me to put the brakes on. When I'm going 90 m.p.h., if I don't apply the brakes within six seconds after the signals change, they come on automatically. If I don't put the brakes on within six seconds, I can't override them until the train has come to a complete stop.

"It's my opinion that even if (maintenance vehicles) shunt only 50 percent of the time, that means I've got a 50-50 chance of knowing something is up there if I get in on a track that is occupied," he said.

As a backup to the current system of dispatchers and switchmen - which has more than once demonstrated its capacity to be derailed by human error - 50-50 odds are worth considering, Hauselieter said.

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Jed Dodd, general chairman of the local Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, represents the men who dove for safety from the ballast regulator on Jan. 29 - and about 2,000 other Amtrak workers who construct and maintain tracks, roadbeds, bridges and overhead wires.

"We've had a standing argument with Amtrak for years that this equipment should be designed to shunt," Dodd said in an interview. "The fact is, if the ballast regulator had shunted, (Connor) would not have been able to throw the switch that directed the train onto the same track. And . . . the engineer would have seen a stop signal displayed on the control panel in his engine. "

Shunting is "a backup system that would provide protection in the event a tower operator has a heart attack or a diabetic coma or is mugged when he's out there in the middle of the night," Dodd said.

In addition, Dodd questioned Amtrak's assertion that maintenance vehicles may be too light to shunt on all but the most highly polished rails.

Around here, "Amtrak doesn't have any rusty rail," Dodd said. "They run a hundred trains a day in each direction, and the rail is quite shiny. "

Although several railroad unions testified in favor of a shunting provision for the comprehensive railroad safety bill recently submitted to U.S. House and Senate conferees, the legislation does not require shunting on maintenance vehicles - primarily because the Federal Railroad Administration, which regulates passenger and freight lines, opposed it.

"There is no proven technology which would guarantee that a light rail vehicle will shunt the signals. Uncertain shunting is far more dangerous than nothing at all because it breeds a false sense of security," said William Loftus, executive director of the Federal Railroad Administration.

"If you use that same logic," said Andrew Malleck, legislative representative for the Maintenance of Way Employees, "why do people drive responsibly after they attach their seat belts?

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Since the accident, staffers for the conferees have been considering a recommendation that shunting be made a requirement in the final bill.

Rep. Thomas A. Luken (D., Ohio), chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over railroads, "is very interested in that provision," senior subcommittee counsel John Arlington said Friday.

On Thursday, Luken asked the Railway Progress Institute, an organization of railroad-equipment manufacturers, for an independent opinion about the reliability of light-rail shunting. He expects to have an answer later this week, Arlington said.