Two track workers were killed and 41 passengers were injured when train No. 89, the southbound Palmetto, struck the backhoe near Chester, Pa., on April 3, 2016. In a subsequent drug test, the locomotive engineer tested positive for marijuana, while drugs were also found to be in the system of both workers who were killed.
Interviews with maintenance supervisors suggest confusion at a shift change over the work crew’s permission to do work that would impede, or foul, active adjacent tracks, along with permission to take one of the line’s four main tracks out of service. The incoming day-shift foreman received his Form D permission to take track 2 out-of-service in a phone call to the dispatcher at 7:26 a.m., while the outgoing night-shift foreman cancelled his own Form D, as well as his permissions to temporarily foul the other tracks, in a phone call to the dispatcher at 7:28 a.m.
The dispatcher on duty said he expected a call “within seconds, if not a minute” from the day-shift foreman requesting to pick those “fouls,” as the permissions are known, but in the interim, the dispatcher maintained his option to use the other tracks.
“But the next time I heard from [the day foreman] was right after the impact,” the dispatcher said, “when he called and asked me, ‘Did Robinson [the night foreman] give up his foul?’ I said, ‘Yes, he did,’ and he told me it’s bad out here, ‘We need an ambulance.’ And based on his anxiety in his voice, I kind of knew 89 hit something.”
That was at 7:50 a.m., after the train struck the backhoe, sitting on track 3.
The train was going 106 mph when the engineer realized the backhoe was fouling the track, but even with an emergency brake application, the train was still going 88 mph when hit it the tractor, destroying it, derailing the ACS-64 locomotive and sending tractor debris into the first coach. Along with the locomotive, four cars of the 10-car train were damaged, at a total cost of $2.5 million, according to Amtrak’s estimate.
Thursday’s release of the documents precedes the NTSB’s full report on the accident, and will provide the basis for the conclusions as to cause of the accident.
