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Metrolink Faults Engineer In Crash

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The Washington Post

Published: September 14, 2008

LOS ANGELES - As officials concluded a search for victims of the worst U.S. train accident in 15 years, questions arose Saturday about why the engineer of a Southern California commuter rail locomotive allegedly ran through a stop signal, sending his train head-on into a freight train.
Federal investigators are looking into the cause of the Friday afternoon collision, which killed 25 people and injured 134, but a spokeswoman of the commuter service, Metrolink, said the engineer's mistake was to blame.

"At this moment, we must acknowledge that it was a Metrolink engineer that made the error that caused yesterday's accident," Denise Tyrrell said at a news conference.

The engineer, whose name was not released, died in the crash, said Timothy L. Smith, board chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

Two agencies looking into the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Association, said they would not comment on the cause of the crash until completing their investigation.
Rescue crews in the Los Angeles suburb of Chatsworth employed heavy machinery to sift through the wreckage and search for those still missing. About 24 hours after the crash, they halted the recovery effort.

There were 222 people on the Metrolink train and three on the southbound Union Pacific freight train when they collided in the San Fernando Valley, sending the front of the passenger train on its side, and flames and smoke billowing into the air.

The trains were sharing a single track, an arrangement common throughout the country. Rather than build their tracks, commuter trains typically rent track usage from freight companies that own existing lines.

Dispatchers monitor the shared tracks, signaling one train to pull over at a switch station and wait while another passes by.

Experts speculated Saturday that operator fatigue, a possible glitch in the stop signals or poor visibility may have contributed to the crash.

"For the most part, train travel is the safest way to move goods across this country and to move people," said Patricia Abbate, executive director of the Citizens for Rail Safety, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization that promotes rail safety, capacity and security. But "human errors come into play, as well as mechanical errors. And when something like this happens, it's unforgiving."

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