(The following story by Heather Vogell appeared on the Charlotte Observer website on January 18. Brian McLaughlin is Local Chairman of BLET Division 85 in Columbia, S.C.)
CHARLOTTE — Train engineer Brian McLaughlin said he doesn’t know exactly what happened the night a freight train barreled off the main line and smashed into a parked train in Graniteville, S.C., spewing deadly chlorine gas.
But he has ridden many times with members of the crew that investigators say may have left a track switch in the wrong position and caused the crash.
“I would trust these guys,” said the local chair of the train engineers’ union. “They’ve never given me a reason to question their performance.”
Even if investigators find the three-man crew erred, McLaughlin said, the crash should push railroads nationwide to look at installing more electronic signals to warn trains when a track is out of place or blocked.
That safeguard isn’t there for 40 percent of the tracks considered “dark territory” by rail workers because they lack such electronic signals.
As cleanup of the wreck that killed nine continued Friday, another 1,500 people returned to their Graniteville homes. About 5,400 were evacuated after the Jan. 6 crash. About 2,000 went home Thursday.
Workers loaded 11 damaged cars onto flatbed rail cars to be carted away. They removed about 200 cubic feet of potentially contaminated soil from the site.
The three crewmen’s names became public after a lawsuit was filed against them and Norfolk Southern railroad in Aiken County Court on Thursday.
All are Columbia area residents, the suit says. A man at Benjimin Aiken’s home declined to comment. Efforts to reach the other two, Mike Ford and James Thornton, were unsuccessful.
Asked about the lawsuit — one of three filed this week — Norfolk-Southern spokesman Robin Chapman said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
McLaughlin, who lives in West Columbia, said he’s waiting to hear what investigators say about what caused the wreck.
A Norfolk Southern employee and 27-year rail veteran, he said he never used to think about what could happen if the track was mispositioned.
But the Graniteville crash and other recent accidents have him worried.
“You never know what’s around the next bend,” McLaughlin said. “It’s kind of scary.”
Relying on manually positioned switches without electronic warning signals is “archaic,” he said.
Chapman said territories are left dark or signaled based on volume.
“Graniteville is more rural and a low volume area,” he said.
Local officials are also looking for ways to improve safety in transporting hazardous materials by rail.
Augusta, Ga., Mayor Bob Young sent Gov. Sonny Perdue a letter this week asking him to create a task force to study the issue.