(The following article by Stacy Millberg was posted on the Ashtabula Star-Beacon website on September 26.)
WAYNE TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Norfolk Southern Corp. officials are investigating the cause of a train derailment that sent 24 cars off the tracks near Route 322, Sunday.
Rudy Husband, Norfolk and Southern director of public relations, said there is no set time frame for the duration of an investigation of this type.
“We will collect data and analyze it, and when we are comfortable with (the findings), we will determine the cause,” he said.
The 105-car coal train was en route to the Ashtabula coal docks when it derailed at 4:55 p.m. Twenty cars were on their sides on the east side of the tracks that run north and south, about one-half mile east of Hayes Road. Other cars were still upright north of the Route 322 intersection with several hundred yards of open track between the two sets of cars.
According to the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA’s) Web site, the overall number of train derailments declined by 13.6 percent nationally during the first six months of 2006 as compared with the same period during 2005.
Norfolk Southern, which services 21 states, has reported 810 derailments since 2003. Pennsylvania had the highest number of derailments since 2003, with 151, and Ohio is next in line with 119, according to FRA.
In 2004, Norfolk Southern reported 248 derailments with 36 of them occurring in Ohio. In 2005, the railroad reported 232 derailments with 35 of them occurring in Ohio. Between January and June of 2006, Norfolk and Southern reported 92 derailments with 11 of them occurring in Ohio, according to FRA.
The No. 1 cause for Norfolk Southern train derailments is missing or defective cross-ties, to which 125 derailments have been attributed since 2003. One hundred derailments were attributed to “switch improperly lined,” according to FRA’s Web site, the second highest cause.