(The following story by Larry Higgs appeared on the Asbury Park Press website on January 1.)
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — The train that dragged John D’Agostino to his death on Nov. 21, 2006, in Bradley Beach had a defect that NJ Transit employees had reported three times in the four days before the fatal accident, according to a federal report about the accident.
The defect involved an indicator light in the locomotive, which would have told the crew that one of the doors on the train was still open. D’Agostino, 49, a native of Neptune, was pinned when a train door closed on him as he was getting off the train in Bradley Beach. The door failed to re-open, and he was dragged to his death.
In the December Federal Railroad Administration report about the accident is a listing of three incidents in which the PCS (Pneumatic Control System) indicator light in locomotive No. 4116 operated normally when the train stopped at stations with high-level platforms on the North Jersey Coast Line, but didn’t work when it stopped at stations with low-level platforms.
Information downloaded from the locomotive’s event recorder, which is like the black box in an airliner, showed that on the morning of the accident, the light worked normally in stations with high-level platforms, such as Red Bank and Asbury Park, but stopped functioning at stations with low platforms, such as Little Silver, Allenhurst and Bradley Beach, according to the report.
The report also shows that the problem was reported to NJ Transit once on Nov. 17 by train crews and twice more on Nov. 20.
NJ Transit and FRA officials blamed the accident on the crew, and accused the engineer of operating the train with a bypass switch on, which would have allowed the locomotive to draw power to move even if a door were open.
In an interview with the FRA, according to the report, the engineer denied moving the bypass switch out of its normal position.
If the PCS light was off when the bypass switch was in its normal position, the light would indicate an open door on the train and the locomotive would not receive power to move the train, said Patrick Reilly, general chairman of United Transportation Union Local 60, which represents NJ Transit assistant conductors and conductors.
Reilly is a former inspector and accident investigator with the FRA and National Surface Transportation Board. He brought concerns about the train doors and safety equipment to NJ Transit’s board of trustees last July.
“Something was wrong with that equipment. The FRA and the carrier (NJ Transit) came to the conclusion that the doors were in bypass, but there was an electrical problem,” Reilly said. “That train should have never gone out.”
Had the light functioned the way it should have, with the bypass switch in normal position, the light would have gone off, meaning a door was still open, and the train wouldn’t have been able to move, he said.
Unlike a check engine light in a car, which comes on to indicate a problem, the PCS light instead lights up when the train doors are closed and turns off when they are open, Reilly said. When the light is off, and a door is open, the locomotive can’t take power to move, if it is functioning properly, he said.
“It was reported three times (prior to the accident),” Reilly said. “The (bypass) switch was in the normal mode and there was some kind of malfunction when the train was in low-level (station) mode. It was not working as intended.”
According to the FRA report, on Nov. 17, the locomotive and rail cars were used on train No. 2348 to Hoboken, and on the return trip to Dover, the report said, there was “no PCS at high or low platforms.”
That same day, when the locomotive and cars were used on train No. 2311 west, there was “no PCS at low-level platforms,” the report said.
On Nov. 20, the locomotive and rail cars were used on train No. 2311 on the Coast Line and “no PCS at low platforms” was again reported, the FRA report said. The train set ran east to Long Branch as train No. 4388 and “no low-level PCS” was reported.
The locomotive and cars returned to Bay Head and then were sent to Long Branch, and then to East Matawan to rescue passengers on a train that struck a woman.
D’Agostino was riding on that train.
“Once an engineer reports a problem (with equipment) it has to be addressed or corrected,” Reilly said. “Nothing shows it was addressed.”
NJ Transit officials declined to comment, because information about the PCS light problem with the train set being reported prior to the accident was not in the copy of the report the agency received from the FRA.
“It’s not something we’ve seen,” said Dan Stessel, NJ Transit spokesman.
FRA officials said in an e-mail Monday that they don’t consider that defect to mean there is a larger problem with equipment.
“FRA did not and does not consider this to be an indication of a larger or systemic mechanical problem, since the equipment was in end door bypass position for several days prior to the fatality as evidenced by the locomotive event recorder,” said Warren Flateau, FRA spokesman.
He said that by design, the PCS light will not illuminate when the end doors are open, the end door bypass switch is on and the train is stopping at a station with a low platform.
The PCS light will illuminate when the center doors, which are used for high-level platforms, are open unless the center door bypass switch is in the bypass position, Flateau said. Only the end door bypass switch was in the bypass position, while the center door bypass switch was in the normal position, he said.
However, Reilly said that the bypass switch was put in the bypass position when a different crew moved the locomotive and cars from Spring Lake to Bay Head after the accident on the morning of Nov. 21.