(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Daniel Lovering on October 25.)
PITTSBURGH — A final report on the possible cause of a fiery train derailment will not be ready for months, an official said.
Experts from the National Transportation Safety Board had worked since Saturday in New Brighton, where 23 tanker cars containing ethanol tumbled off a bridge the night before, sparking an explosion and long-burning fires.
Ted Lopatkiewicz, an NTSB spokesman, said workers from the agency were closing their onsite investigation Tuesday and would return to the nation’s capital.
“It will definitely be months before there’s a final report and probably months before we have factual reports to issue as well,” he said.
The agency could issue safety recommendations at any time during the investigation, Lopatkiewicz said.
Nine of the tanker cars leaked ethanol – also known as grain alcohol – and caught fire. Workers extinguished the last of the burning cars Sunday night. The tankers were part of an 86-car train pulled by three locomotives traveling from Chicago to New Jersey.
No one was injured, but about 50 residents in the immediate area were evacuated and dozens more spent Friday night away from their homes for fear of further explosions.
A family assistance center set up at a church had processed about 179 people, New Brighton borough manager Larry Morley said. Representatives of Norfolk Southern, which owns the rail line, were on hand to compensate residents for hotel, food and other expenses.
Agents have retrieved data recorders from the train and studied the derailed cars as part of their probe. They also removed a section of track that had broken in two and sent it to Washington, D.C., for analysis.
The train’s crew told investigators the train was running well until it automatically applied emergency brakes because pneumatic brake lines between cars had been severed. It was unclear what role the brake lines played in the accident.
Workers, meanwhile, have removed the remaining burned-out tanker cars from the half-mile long bridge spanning the Beaver River and those that plunged into the water below, said Morley.
The tankers have been stacked in a neighboring park and must be certified as clean by environmental officials before they can be cut into pieces and removed from the area, he said.
Rail traffic, which had resumed earlier on one of two tracks on the bridge, was still flowing, Morley said.
“The second track is still being worked on,” he said.
Rudy Husband, a Norfolk Southern spokesman, said the company was hoping to have the second track back in operation by Wednesday afternoon.
The derailment also affected Amtrak’s Capitol Limited, which makes one round trip daily between Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The trains were running on schedule Tuesday, but could face one- to two-hour delays because of the single track in New Brighton and freight congestion, said Amtrak spokeswoman Tracy Connell.
The derailment happened about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh on tracks used by 50 to 70 trains each day.