(The following story by Andrew Ryan and Milton Valencia appeared on the Boston Globe website on March 28. Ronald Gomes is a member of BLET Division 57 in Boston, Mass.)
BOSTON — Recordings released yesterday of radio communications between MBTA commuter train engineer Ronald Gomes and a railroad dispatcher painted a dramatic picture of the moments before a runaway freight car smashed into Gomes’s train on Tuesday.
“There’s a box car coming right down on top of me,” Gomes said in a concerned voice. “Is it OK to back up?”
Then, as the 112-ton juggernaut sped faster toward his locomotive, Gomes’s tone changed.
“We’ve got an emergency!” Gomes screamed. “Emergency! Emergency!”
Before he could put the commuter train into reverse, the freight car slammed into it, knocking Gomes across the cab. The impact of the crash pushed the six-car train back 47 feet. Dripping with blood, Gomes reached again for the radio, trying to get help for the injured passengers.
“A box car crashed into us,” Gomes said, his voice garbled and full of pain. “Please send medical assistance.”
The recordings were released by the MBTA as investigators continued to look for the cause of the crash, which happened at about 5:16 p.m near Canton Junction and left 150 people with injuries, most of them minor.
The crash occurred five minutes after an employee at a Stoughton lumber yard called police, warning that the freight car had gained access to the commuter rail tracks and that any approaching train should be stopped. The runaway car traveled roughly 3 miles before crashing into the MBTA train.
Yesterday, outside his single-family house nestled in a wooded area in Rehoboth, the 61-year-old Gomes, dressed in Adidas pants and a sweatshirt, had cuts on his head and his lips and was missing his front teeth. He said he had spent the day at doctors’ offices and would need plastic surgery for his lip, as well as teeth implants.
“I’m very sore all on the side, bruised inside,” said Gomes, who has worked for the MBTA for 39 years.
He said he was just doing his job as usual, and he dismissed talk of his heroism.
“I was just doing what I was trained to do,” he said. “That’s what I was there doing. When you’re in the seat, you have to keep yourself in a frame of mind. . . . You just do instinctively with the training you have.”
CSX Transportation delivered six freight cars Tuesday to Cohenno Inc., the lumber yard on Evans Drive in Stoughton. The company receives deliveries daily, a CSX official said. Both the company that delivered the freight car to the lumber yard around noon Tuesday and the union that represents those crewmen said the car was fully secured after delivery.
George Casey, local chairman of the United Transportation Union, said yesterday that brakes were applied to all of the car’s eight wheels. He said both the regular brakes and backup brakes were set. Bob Sullivan, a CSX spokesman, also said the crews properly secured the cars.
Investigators also interviewed forklift operators at the Stoughton lumber yard Wednesday.
Andrew Cohenno, whose family owns the lumber company, said any reports that an employee manipulated the freight car with a forklift are false. He said company workers never moved the freight car or touched the brake. He said the company is cooperating fully with the investigation.
Investigators also are trying to determine why a derailing device on the railroad tracks didn’t stop the runaway car.