(The following article by Art Campos was posted on the Sacramento Bee website on November 11.)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An investigation into what caused a train derailment that left two workers dead near Baxter is now in the hands of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Officials from the agency arrived Friday to begin the probe as crews from Union Pacific Railroad, owner of the tracks, tried to remove six derailed cars — four of which burned for most of Thursday because they carried combustible fuels used in maintenance work.
About 600 feet of track damaged in the derailment was being replaced Friday, Union Pacific reported.
Crew members on the train noticed it began picking up speed on its descent, but they could not slow it down using its regular braking system. The emergency brake slowed it just slightly before the train’s supervisor — in a final, desperate move — threw the locomotive engine into reverse, said Dave Watson, the investigator in charge of the incident for the National Transportation Safety Board.
A second railroad track running next to the damaged line was officially reopened at 7:30 a.m. Friday, and a freight train used it four hours later. Two Amtrak trains used it later in the day.
Meanwhile, the Placer County Coroner’s Office is trying to identify the bodies of two men found under the wreckage of the train cars early Friday.
Placer County sheriff’s officials said one of the bodies was burned and would need to be identified through dental records.
Both victims were part of a crew belonging to Harsco Track Technologies, a South Carolina company that contracts with Union Pacific for repair work on railroad tracks.
Seven other Harsco employees and a pilot who works for Union Pacific suffered minor injuries during the accident Thursday but declined medical attention.
Officials for their companies declined to release information about them or the men who died.
A firefighter also was injured in Thursday’s blaze. The fire was extinguished by 4:30 p.m., but the wreckage continued to send smoke and steam into the air until about 10 p.m.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reported that a fire captain, despite wearing thick gloves, burned his hand after touching a red-hot iron on a train car.
“Even after the fire was out and the car had been doused with hundreds of gallons of water, the metal burned right through his glove,” said Tina Rose, a CDF spokeswoman. “He suffered a second-degree burn to his palm.”
Union Pacific and Harsco spokesmen said their companies will cooperate fully with the NTSB investigation.
“The NTSB will check out all of the conditions — the train, the tracks, the environment,” said Ken Julian of Harsco Corp., parent company of Harsco Track Technologies.
Contents of a data recorder, popularly known as a “black box” in transportation jargon, also would be examined for clues as to what went wrong, he said.
The derailment took place after 11 a.m. Thursday about two miles from Interstate 80 near Baxter. Six of the 10 cars on the train left the track.
The cars were carrying 11,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 6,000 gallons of hydraulic fluid. Acetylene and propane fuel also were aboard, as were tanks of oxygen and water.
All are used in an operation known as “rail-grinding,” in which a maintenance train goes to various locations to smooth out damaged rail tracks.
The train was not performing rail-grinding work when it derailed and caught fire, according to the Placer County Sheriff’s Department. The train was moving west to another location, officials said.
Mark Davis, a Union Pacific spokesman, said an average of 17 trains use the tracks between Reno and Sacramento each day. Most are freight trains, but Amtrak, the passenger train company, also uses the line, he said.
When the accident closed the tracks Thursday, Amtrak was forced to transport about 125 eastbound passengers by bus from Sacramento to Sparks, Nev., said Vernae Graham, an Amtrak spokeswoman. The company also bused 134 westbound passengers from Sparks to Sacramento, she said.
On Friday, normal operation of the California Zephyr line, which runs daily between Emeryville and Chicago, resumed, she said.
However, the trains were running behind schedule, she said.