(The Washington Post published the following story by Don Phillips on its website on August 6.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A failure by CSX Transportation crews to properly maintain railroad tracks — which were already in substandard condition — caused the derailment of Amtrak’s Auto Train near Crescent City, Fla., last year that killed four people, the National Transportation Safety Board said yesterday.
The northbound train, with 413 passengers and 33 crew members, derailed April 18, 2002, as it rounded a curve. At the time, it was operating over CSX tracks under contract with the freight railroad. The Amtrak engineer reported seeing the track badly out of alignment just ahead of him.
The board offered a laundry list of mistakes, improper procedures and substandard work by CSX maintenance crews that it said was directly responsible for the wreck, which also injured 142 people. The board also said CSX managers failed to oversee maintenance standards.
The Crescent City wreck and another involving Amtrak’s Capitol Limited near Kensington, Md., on July 29, 2002, in which 101 people were injured, have highlighted concerns in recent years about maintenance of CSX’s tracks.
The railroad has had to impose new speed restrictions during times of wide temperature swings because of the possibility of tracks buckling. The restrictions have led to regular summertime delays for commuters on the Virginia Railway Express and MARC rail in Maryland.
The safety board has yet to report on the Kensington wreck, but investigators have focused on maintenance performed near the spot of the derailment. The railroad also had wrecks in 1996 and 1997 caused by faulty tracks. After those incidents, the railroad promised to upgrade its facilities and has said accidents have decreased.
The railroad yesterday did not dispute the safety board report. It said it had implemented the recommendations made by the board, including a new quality-control program to ensure that maintenance personnel follow CSX standards. “We think the NTSB conducted a fair and thorough review of the accident,” CSX spokesman Adam Hollingsworth said.
During the last few years, CSX management has sometimes been distracted by reorganization, turnover, the CSX acquisition of portions of Conrail in 1999 and the economic downturn. Longtime Chairman John W. Snow left the railroad to become treasury secretary in January. New Chairman Michael J. Ward moved corporate headquarters from Richmond to Jacksonville, Fla.
The Auto Train carries passengers and their automobiles overnight between Lorton and Sanford, Fla. NTSB staff members said the track on the curve where the accident occurred failed to meet minimum CSX standards before the accident. Among other things, there was insufficient ballast to make certain that the track was restrained during passage of trains.
In addition, the track had an insufficient number of rail anchors, and some anchors were improperly installed. Anchors are heavy metal clips to hold welded rail firmly in place during swings in temperature and as trains pass over it.
A maintenance crew realigned the track on Oct. 11, 2001, using mechanized track equipment called a liner-tamper, which can move rail into position and then tamp ballast under and around the ties to hold the track in place. As it worked around the curve, however, the maintenance crew discovered that the liner-tamper was not operating properly, and the crew stopped. The NTSB said that introduced a weak point in the track.
Additional work was done on the curve on Feb. 26, but the crew that day did not document the track’s exact position. Two weeks later, when another crew worked on the track, it had no way of knowing the track had moved since the previous crew had been there, which apparently was the beginning of the movement that led to the wreck.
During none of the maintenance was there any record that any crews heated the rail to its proper “target” temperature so that high temperatures would not exert excessive force on the rail, the board said.
In addition, although the Feb. 26 maintenance work was performed during a period when the temperature never got below 50 degrees, it actually sank near freezing at night as the track stabilized over the next few days. CSX rules call for special procedures to be performed when the temperature gets that low, but there is no record that was done, the board said.