(The following article by Josh White was posted on the Washington Post website on August 29.)
WASHINGTON — An Amtrak train bound for the District and New York City hit a dump truck yesterday at a crossing outside Manassas, killing the truck’s driver and stranding more than 270 passengers for more than six hours while crews cleared the debris.
Prince William County police said the driver, Richard McNamara, 36, of Manassas, apparently was turning around to leave a construction site at the end of Milford Road when the train hit the passenger side of the truck’s cab about 9:40 a.m. Police estimated the train’s speed at more than 75 mph and said the train pushed the truck about a half-mile before stopping.
Amtrak officials said they had not determined how fast the train was going. Norfolk-Southern, which owns the tracks, said Amtrak trains have an authorized speed of 79 mph in that area.
The crossing, which serves a few houses on a short dead-end dirt road, is not equipped with safety arms or warning lights, and police said the driver probably failed to see the train coming down a long straightaway. Dennis Mangan, a police spokesman, said the train’s engineers tried to stop.
“They saw the truck across the tracks, hit the brakes and got on the floor,” Mangan said.
Police said McNamara likely was killed on impact; his body was recovered about 100 yards from the crossing. He had just delivered a bulldozer to the construction site, and the flatbed trailer that had been attached to the truck flipped off the west side of the tracks, felling a large signal pole.
Six people on the 10-car train, including the conductor and three crew members, were taken to the hospital to be treated for minor injuries. The remaining 272 passengers and eight crew members were required to stay on the train while railroad crews removed the crumpled truck, using blowtorches and a crane to pull the blackened cab apart.
Police officials said some diesel fuel leaked after the crash, and one of the train’s two locomotives was moderately damaged.
The train sat on the northbound tracks for more than six hours, part of it on a narrow trestle over Piper Road, near Manassas Regional Airport. Dan Stessel, an Amtrak spokesman, said officials didn’t want to let passengers off the train because of potential danger. The second, undamaged locomotive provided air-conditioning during the wait.
Cheryl Travitz of Crystal City said she spoke by cell phone with her 80-year-old mother, Harriett, several times during the ordeal. It was Harriett Travitz’s first time on a train, and she was traveling the Crescent train from Lynchburg to visit the Washington area.
Though she was supposed to pick up her mother at Union Station, Cheryl Travitz rushed to the crash scene when her mother called her about 10:30 a.m.
“I think she thought the train was going to blow up or that something terrible was going to happen,” Cheryl Travitz said. “She started saying her goodbyes. I think she’s fine now.”
The truck debris was cleared from the tracks by 3 p.m., and the Amtrak train continued its journey to the District about 4:15 p.m.
Amtrak’s Crescent, which runs from New Orleans to New York, was the only Amtrak train delayed by the crash. Susan Bland, a spokeswoman for Norfolk-Southern, said all freight service on the line — a main regional freight throughway — was delayed several hours.