(The following appeared on the Des Moines Register website on May 4, 2011.)
DES MOINES, Iowa — The BNSF Railway train involved in a collision that killed two crew members last month near Red Oak sped up shortly before hitting a stopped maintenance train, federal investigators reported Tuesday.
The crew was properly warned that the tracks were blocked, the National Transportation Safety Board reported, but did not use the emergency brakes.
Preliminary data from a motion recorder on the moving train showed that it sped up before impact came at 23 mph. Visibility was good.
Conductor Patricia Hyatt and engineer Tom Anderson, both 48 and from Creston, died April 17 when their coal train rear-ended another eastbound BNSF train near the unincorporated town of McPherson, between Emerson and Red Oak in southwest Iowa. (BLET Editor’s Note: Brother Anderson was President of BLET Division 642.)
A video camera mounted on the front of the lead locomotive was destroyed in the fire. A device that records the movement of the train was also damaged but has been turned over to the NTSB laboratory in Washington, D.C., for analysis, spokesman Keith Holloway said.
Investigators also will check personnel, maintenance and various other records. In addition, crew cellphone records have been subpoenaed and will be reviewed by investigators.
“We don’t have a cause for the accident yet,” Holloway said.
It typically takes a year to 18 months to complete an investigation.
Full story: Des Moines Register