WASHINGTON — A failure to follow rules prohibiting employees from moving between moving railcars during coupling was the probable cause of the death of a Pan Am Railways conductor, according to the National Transportation Safety Board report on the fatal May 2021 accident.
The accident in Newington, N.H., on the afternoon of May 19, 2021, occurred while Pan Am local D01 was switching at the SubCom Industries facility. The conductor was pinned between two couplers while attempting to add two empty railcars to the local through gravity coupling, in which cars with their brakes released are allowed to roll downhill to couple to the rest of the train. The first five attempts to join the two cars through gravity coupling on the curved spur track were unsuccessful, and resulted in a separation of about 5 feet between the two sets of equipment. The conductor stepped into the gap between the train and the unbraked cars during the sixth attempt and was pinned between the couplers. He was taken to a nearby hospital but later died from his injuries.
At the time, Pan Am rules allowed gravity coupling but prohibited employees from walking between equipment, and required any manual adjustment of couplers to occur when cars are stationary and there is at least 50 feet of separation between the equipment. Pan Am subsequently banned gravity coupling at the SubCom facility, and the railroad and SubCom altered their operations to avoid coupling on the curved track where the accident occurred.
The NTSB had issued its preliminary report on the accident in June 2021, indicating the conductor had 42 years of railroading experience [see “Digest: Ruling delays closure …,” Trains News Wire, June 16, 2021].
