(The following report from Chronicle News Service appeared at Mlive.com on December 4.)
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Longtime Amtrak engineers say they cannot understand why the Pere Marquette was speeding in a restricted zone when it crashed into a freight train, injuring dozens of people and spawning at least one lawsuit.
“Speeding is a cardinal sin, where you will lose your license,” said engineer Steven Suhs, who runs Amtrak trains between Chicago and St. Louis.
Passengers said the train was about an hour behind schedule, but according to Suhs, “the days are long gone where you were 30 minutes late and you did what you could to make up those 30 minutes.”
Federal investigators say they are trying to determine why an engineer on the train from Grand Rapids to Chicago was traveling 40 mph on Friday when the speed was restricted to 15 mph.
The Federal Railroad Administration, which is investigating with the National Transportation Safety Board, can issue fines and pull an engineer’s license for speeding.
“We are looking at actions of the crew members, interviewing the train crew, looking at actions of the dispatcher, the operation of the signal system,” said FRA spokesman Steve Kulm.
The results of that investigation interest a Grandville family, who filed a lawsuit in Chicago on Monday alleging negligence on the part of the passenger line and freight hauler Norfolk Southern.
John Hamstra Sr. was knocked unconscious and suffered a fractured shoulder and concussion when he was thrust forward by the crash, according to his attorney, Thomas Prindable.
Hamstra, 63, was traveling from Grand Rapids to Chicago with his wife, Marcia; daughter-in-law, Bridgett; and three grandchildren for an overnight shopping trip.
“No one’s rushing to the bank,” Prindable said Monday. “It’s an honorable attempt for fair compensation, not a question of millions of dollars.”
The Chicago attorney seeks information about the signals, the train’s acceleration and the experience of operators.
Passengers said the train was 40 minutes behind schedule when it left Holland and more than an hour late as it neared Chicago.
The train stopped for 10 minutes a short time earlier because gates at a railroad crossing weren’t working, passengers said.
Amtrak operates in that area on rails owned by Norfolk Southern Railroad and often is delayed because freight trains take priority.
The train was headed into Chicago when it slowed to 10 mph to cross over to a parallel set of tracks, NTSB officials said.
A Norfolk Southern dispatcher in Dearborn, near Detroit, switched the train to those tracks and set a speed limit of 15 mph, a railroad official said.
The speed limit usually is 79 mph. Engineers say dispatchers lower it when they know of potential obstacles on the tracks ahead.
A warning signal at the crossover showed red and yellow lights, indicating the restricted speed, NTSB officials said.
It was the only signal before the crash 1.7 miles away in a crowded rail yard, NTSB officials said.
“Maybe he looked over, got the wrong one,” said longtime engineer James R. Ullery, of Valparaiso, Ind., who ran the Pere Marquette trip 15 years ago.
The train’s event recorder shows it accelerated to 40 mph after passing the signal.
“I noticed moments before the crash, ‘Wow, we usually go through this area so slowly,”‘ said Diane Kalusniak, of Grand Haven, who rides Amtrak to Chicago several times a year.
Hamstra, the Grandville man who is suing, was checking on a grandchild when the train halted, throwing him forward. He did not hear or feel the train braking, his attorney said.