(The following article by Steve Orr appeared on the Democrat and Chronicle website on June 10.)
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — In a series of inspections of 199 CSX railroad highway crossings in the Rochester area and elsewhere in New York state, federal regulators found defects at 41 percent of the crossings.
Most of the defects were characterized as minor problems that didn’t affect safety.
But regulators did find 12 crossings — eight in the Rochester area — where poor track maintenance gave rise to defects that could affect protective equipment.
The Federal Railroad Administration, which released the new report on inspections Wednesday, is recommending that CSX be fined unspecified amounts for those dozen problems.
One of the dozen crossings found to have serious problems was South Winton Road in Henrietta, where repeated failures of protective gates and lights indirectly led to a car-train accident on Feb. 3 that left two town residents dead.
In a report on the accident that it issued last month, the FRA said the primary cause of the Henrietta accident was CSX’s pattern of inadequate crossing maintenance.
The series of inspections was done in response to a public outcry over the accident and several other rail-safety incidents in New York. An investigation by the Democrat and Chronicle also revealed a pattern of inadequate maintenance and staffing by CSX.
The report on the FRA inspections underscores the agency’s concern about CSX’s local maintenance practices. The report said the inspectors’ check of the South Winton crossing determined that brine, created by road salt, had caused the crossing circuitry to malfunction. The inspection occurred after Feb. 12.
“It’s a serious condition, and we saw in Henrietta what could happen if it’s not addressed,” FRA spokesman Warren Flatau said.
The inspection report also recommended fines for brine or drainage problems at four other crossings in Chili and Brighton that are on the same stretch of track, the West Shore line, which traverses southern Monroe County.
Similar problems were noted at three crossings on CSX’s main east-west tracks in Gates, and fines were recommended there as well.
CSX already has rebuilt or upgraded each of the eight crossings cited by the FRA, as part of a program to improve 17 crossings in the area. The last of those 17 crossings is to be finished next week.
“The report points out crossing issues that for the most part have been addressed in the crossing action plan that we have. We are comparing the list now to see what other work we need to add to that plan,” CSX spokesman Gary Sease said Wednesday.
Sease said the railroad also intended to spot check other crossings in the northern part of its service territory to see if it has additional problems related to drainage or salt. “We don’t think we do, but we want to make sure,” he said.
Flatau said the overall 41 percent defect rate found in the agency’s inspections was “what we would expect to find. Overall, there were not widespread deficiencies or problems.”
Many of the defects were for such things as wires not being secured or properly labeled, or light bulbs being burned out.
The FRA looked at 199 crossings from far southwestern New York to the Hudson Valley.
Inspectors also looked at 23 miles of track in Rockland County, where several derailments provoked public complaints about CSX. The FRA said it found only five minor defects there.