|
Crash investigators focus on track
Problems with drainage and possible damage from an earlier train are considered in the investigation of the fatal derailment.
©Washington Post
April 21, 2002
CRESCENT CITY -- Tracks in the area where Amtrak's Auto Train derailed Thursday had experienced chronic problems with water drainage in the sandy Florida soil, and investigators said Saturday they are looking at the possibility that this contributed to the wreck that killed four elderly passengers and injured more than 160 others.
George Black, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators are concentrating on track problems as the probable cause of the derailment. He said investigators had found "nothing remarkable" in inspections of the Amtrak equipment.
Investigators are also looking at track maintenance in the area, Black said, as well as whether a coal train that passed over the same track six minutes before the wreck might have helped push at least one rail out of alignment.
The engineer of the coal train, slowing it as it rounded the curve there, engaged dynamic brakes, which use the engine to slow the train, like downshifting a car. Since there is some slack in the couplers between each car, investigators want to know whether the use of dynamic brakes caused the slack throughout the train to compress, producing forces that could have further pounded the rail.
Black said the two Amtrak engineers had almost no time to react to what appears to have been a misalignment of the track. The engineer at the controls told investigators he saw the misaligned track as it was about to go under the nose of the engine.
The relief engineer said he never saw the misalignment but felt a violent shaking, as did the conductor. All three immediately reached for emergency air brake valves, Black said.
Authorities identified the four people who died as Frank Alfredo, 68, of Waccabuc, N.Y.; Joan DiStefano, 65, of Staten Island; and husband and wife Joseph and Marjorie Wright of Toronto. Twelve people remained hospitalized.
Back to State news
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
 |
