Conrail Train Ran Through Switches in Amtrak Wreck : Engineer Says He Couldn’t Stop at Signal

CHASE, Md. — The Conrail engines hit by a passenger train in a collision that killed 15 people and injured 176 ran a stop signal moments before the crash, federal investigators said Monday.

The engineer operating the Conrail engines told the railroad in a written statement that he saw the stop signal about 500 feet from the site of Sunday afternoon’s crash, but was unable to stop in time, said Joseph T. Nall, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

The track switches were set for the Amtrak train at the collision site, and the Conrail train ran through the switches, Nall told a news conference late Monday.

“Braking was intensive but not sufficient to keep him off track No. 2” on which the Amtrak train was running, he said.

The Conrail train’s signal near the site had signified “stop” for at least three hours before the accident, Nall said. He said that officials were not sure what was shown by another signal for the Conrail train about two miles from the accident site.

(The Washington Post quoted unidentified sources in its editions today as saying the more distant signal erroneously told the crew to proceed. When the engineer saw the stop signal near the accident site, it was too late, the Post reported.)

On the day after the worst accident in Amtrak’s 15-year history, 1,000 exhausted rescue workers, Red Cross and Salvation Army volunteers, firefighters and police officers still combed the twisted wreckage of the 12-car Amtrak train that had carried an estimated 500 passengers.

‘No Sign of Life Left’

“There’s no sign of life left in the cars,” said Maj. Robert Oatman of the Baltimore County Police Department shortly after noon. More than 300 passengers apparently escaped injury, he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board is coordinating the probe into the collision of the Amtrak Colonial train with the three Conrail diesel engines and will be assisted by Conrail, Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration.

Nall said earlier Monday that the investigation will center on the track itself, signal systems and mechanical and crew performances.

At a roadside news conference about 50 yards from the crash site, Nall said that crew members were being tested for drug use because it is “an issue that has been raised” in train accidents in recent years.

Data to Be Analyzed

Nall said that investigators are preparing to analyze data from “pulse event recorders,” which were recovered from the crash site. The recorders are similar to the flight recorders that provide information in investigations of airline crashes.

The devices collect data on speed, braking and throttling “that will help us reconstruct and determine the cause of this accident,” Nall said.

Nall said that an Amtrak conductor and three brakemen who survived the crash are being interviewed, along with two surviving trainmen from Conrail and a dispatcher who controlled the trains from Philadelphia, about 100 miles away. The Amtrak engineer was killed in the engine, which was virtually demolished.

The Amtrak train, which originated in Washington and was bound for Boston, was on the same radio frequency as the Conrail engines, Nall said, adding that tapes of the radio transmissions “may or may not yield valuable information to us.”

“The focal point of our investigation is where the Conrail . . . units were, whether they were on the No. 2 track in front of the Amtrak (train) entirely or partially and how they got there.”

Senator Raises Questions

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations transportation subcommittee, was at the crash scene. He raised questions about the merging of four tracks into two just before the trains were to cross the Gunpowder River and about the speed of the Amtrak train, which was authorized to be as high as 105 m.p.h. Such factors, he said, created a “set of conditions that obviously at a given moment could create this kind of accident.”

Meanwhile, a day after the collision of the two northbound trains in this Baltimore suburb, area residents and rescue workers remained stunned at the power of the crash and its carnage.

“It’s like Vietnam,” said Ralph Quinn, a Vietnam veteran and Red Cross volunteer. “The bodies, the wreckage looked like something blew them up. Like in ‘Nam.”