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(The following story by Greg Clary appeared on The Journal News website on March 13.)

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Ice that formed along the West Shore railroad pushed the rails far enough apart to cause last month’s freight train derailment in Haverstraw, CSX officials said yesterday.

A CSX Transportation freight train, including four hopper cars and a locomotive, derailed Feb. 19 while heading north in Haverstraw, spilling nearly 200 tons of silicon pebbles, a nonhazardous substance.

The accident near the Tilcon plant caused a partial evacuation of a nearby neighborhood and closed Route 9W and surrounding roads for hours.

CSX spokesman Gary Cease said the Federal Railroad Administration inspected the track and deemed that it met the agency’s standards.

“We reported to the FRA that ice formed under a tie plate and forced the rail toward the outside at a non-standard angle,” Cease said. “We went back and looked at all our reportable accidents in last two years and had no incident like that, so it’s very unusual.”

Cease said the section of track had been inspected just a few days before the accident and no problems were found. He said the track had since been torn up and new track panels installed.

He said there was a slow-speed order in place for that area until permanent repairs were finished. The railroad is also trying to figure out if there were nearby drainage problems that could contribute to the ice forming.

County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef he could understand a weather-related accident, but still had concerns.

“We’ve had winter every year,” Vanderhoef said. “What happened this year? Also, we’ve had several other derailments, what happened with those?”

Vanderhoef said communication between the railroad’s employees and local emergency crews was inadequate and needed to be improved.

“That kind of thing can be prevented,” he said. “And the frequency of these accidents is still a concern.”

Last month’s derailment was the third in six years along that stretch of the river line and has led U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer to call for the Federal Railroad Administration to conduct a countywide investigation of CSX tracks.

The largest accident, in 1998, took place before CSX bought the line from Conrail.

This week, Congressional representatives Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, and Eliot Engel, D-Bronx, asked the National Transportation Safety Board for a similar investigation of the route as well as its safety, communication and maintenance procedures.

Vanderhoef asked the NTSB for a comprehensive review the day after the accident.

Both agencies have said they’ll review the matter and take appropriate action.

Al Gregg, who lives less than a quarter-mile from the site of last month’s accident, said he was glad to hear so many people were paying attention to the situation now, but he wondered why they weren’t before.

“Especially since there have been so many more trains,” he said. “But if ice is building up on the tracks, there must be some kind of drainage problem. I just hope they stay up on it and take care of the situation. We need checks and balances.”