WASHINGTON — A lack of markers warning of a close-clearance situation was the probable cause of a fatal accident involving a BNSF Railway conductor in La Mirada, Calif., on March 3, 2021, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a final accident report issued late last week.
The conductor was killed during a shoving move shortly after midnight at Buena Park Yard while riding the side ladder of a boxcar, when he became pinned between that car and a locomotive parked on an adjacent track [see “Digest: NTSB releases preliminary report …,” Trains News Wire, April 2, 2021].
In a job briefing beforehand, the conductor had indicated he planned to use a group of three nearby palm trees as an indicator of a safe stopping point. The report’s analysis believes that cars on an adjacent track may have obscured these trees, denying the conductor his visual reference, and notes that orange paint on the rails to indicate clearance points was not reflective and was only visible from certain vantage points and under the right lighting conditions. As a result of these factors, the conductor may have called for his engineer to stop the shoving move too late to avoid the locomotive on the adjacent track.
As a result of the accident, BNSF has established a pilot program at the yard using reflective paddle markers placed alongside the rail to mark clearance points. The railroad may use this program to establish standards for when and how to use such markers.
Because it was midnight and he could see the marker hidden by the rail head.
Obvious the equipment was left in the foul. I’m curious, though we’ll never know, why the conductor did not recognize the locomotives possibly being in the foul.
Why were the locomotives fowling the track?
Why didn’t the conductor dismount before striking them?