http://www.firerescue1.com/news/281757/
Defective rail may have been cause of N.Y. train crash, explosion By Mark Weiner The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York) Copyright 2007 Post-Standard All Rights Reserved ONEIDA, N.Y. - Federal investigators have discovered possible internal defects in a section of broken rail where a freight train left the tracks and several tank cars exploded in Oneida March 12. The National Transportation Safety Board found "pieces of rail at the accident site that were broken ... and showed signs of internal defects near the point of derailment," according to an NTSB memo written Thursday and obtained by The Post-Standard. Investigators recovered the broken rail pieces, including about 2 feet of rail on either side of the broken track, and sent them to the NTSB laboratory to be analyzed, the memo said. Keith Holloway, an NTSB spokesman in Washington, D.C., said Friday it will take "a few months" for the laboratory to make any conclusions. Holloway said he could not confirm that the NTSB found signs of internal defects in the broken rail. "We are not at a point where we can reveal any of the findings," Holloway said. "We took a piece of the rail to our labs to examine," he added. "We know there was a section of track that was questionable that might have some sort of anomaly." He would not elaborate. The NTSB memo also revealed that: The broken rail had been inspected by an ultrasonic rail inspection vehicle as recently as November. An inspector's report showed the rail "had a surface condition that would not allow penetration of the scanning device to look for internal defects." Instead, the inspector used a hand-held ultrasonic device to scan the track and found no problem. The report did not make clear whether the inspection was conducted by the rail owner, CSX Transportation, or the Federal Railroad Administration. The derailment caused about $1.6 million in damage, most of it to the 28 cars that derailed from the 79-car train. Eighteen of the derailed cars were propane tankers. Most of the derailed cars had fire damage from the massive propane fireball that could be seen from miles away. The freight train was traveling at 47 mph at the time of the derailment, close to the maximum authorized speed for the train of 50 mph. After the accident, several hundred people had to be evacuated from a one-mile radius of the explosion. Three propane tankers, a toluene tanker and one carrying ferric chloride were breached. New York's two U.S. senators, Democrats Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, immediately called for congressional hearings to look into CSX's safety record in New York. The Oneida derailment was the company's fourth major accident in the state in four months. Schumer, told Friday that federal inspectors were looking at a possible internal defect in the rail, said: "Enough is enough. CSX must get its house in order and ensure that its thousands of miles of track in Upstate New York are safe." A CSX spokesman had no comment. The Post-Standard reported March 18 that there were 11 accidents involving CSX trains carrying hazardous material in Central New York since 2005. From 1999 to 2004, no such accidents were reported. Federal Railroad Administration records show there were almost 600 freight rail accidents that caused $34 million in damage in Upstate New York from 2000 to 2006, up from 391 accidents in the previous seven years. Schumer blames an increase of accidents on CSX rail on aging infrastructure. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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