(The following article by Diana DeCola was posted on the Marietta Times website on February 1.)
MARIETTA, Ohio — The final CSX report regarding the Dec. 19 derailment that caused the train bridge on Virginia Street to collapse has been filed with the Federal Railroad Administration, a CSX spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Neal F. Zimmers, vice president for CSX in Ohio, previously had said the cause of the wreck was an internal fault in the track itself, a problem no larger than the size of a dime. Engineers with CSX said this type of defect is very rare and can only be detected by X-ray, an inspection that is done only once a year.
Visual inspections happen more frequently, and one had been done only four days before the wreck occurred. An inspection of the tracks on Jan. 11 and 12 uncovered 10 defects in the track. There is an average of 12 defects detected per year.
CSX made the results of its report known at a public meeting Jan. 12. One concern raised by the public at that time was the problem of noise and vibrations. Residents feared wheels on the train cars may not be safe. As a result, an inspection of the wheels on the three trains that come through the Harmar neighborhood were conducted, Dave Sands, safety service director for Marietta, said this week.
The three, 90-car trains use the tracks that cross Virginia Street. Each train has a total of 720 wheels.
“Of the 720 wheels, they found six to be defective on one of the three trains,” said Sands.
The test of the wheels was conducted by American Electric Power, which owns the train cars. The trains transport coal to the AEP power plant near Beverly.
It is not clear if the train with the defective wheels was the one involved in the derailment and reports on the other two trains are not yet available.
Kim Freely, spokeswoman for CSX, said the report stands as presented by CSX officials earlier this month.
“I have not heard anything about wheels in the report,” she said. The report itself was not immediately available Tuesday but should be available later this week.