Hotline #995 - August 15, 1997

Amtrak's eastbound Southwest Chief derailed early on August 9, 15 miles east of Kingman, Ariz. It was going 88 mph, two miles below the limit, when it came to a sagging wooden bridge that had been damaged during the previous two hours by a flash flood. The train shot across the 37-foot-wide, eight-foot-high bridge, derailing on the other side. The train came to a stop with the last sleeping car stopped neatly with one truck on each side of the gap.

The Chief had 309 people on board. Sixteen were hospitalized, with one in critical condition as of August 10. There were early, but erroneous, reports that there had been fatalities.

The accident could have been much worse. National Transportation Safety Board investigators said a broken rail rammed through the fuel tanks of the last locomotive and through a baggage car. However, the locomotive was one of the new GE models with crash resistant tanks, and there was only minor fuel leakage.

All the cars remained upright and more or less in line. It appeared that interior restraints had kept baggage from flying around and hitting passengers, and that light sticks had been used to guide passengers when the power went out.

The Burlington Northern Santa Fe said in the future it will restrict freight trains to 40 mph and passenger trains to 20 mph in the event of flash flood warnings. This is prudent, given the two fatal Amtrak accidents caused by flash floods in the early 1980's.

A similarity between this and the one in 1993 in Alabama that killed 47 is that even though bridges were damaged in both cases, the welded rail stayed together and did not break the signal current. The signals stayed green and the trains went right on into the damaged area. This reinforces the need for sensors that can interrupt a signal circuit when a bridge is damaged or misaligned, just the way a broken rail would.

On the legislative front, our two priorities in August remain telling the President to support Amtrak reauthorization, and telling Congress to support the Senate's Amtrak operating and mandatory retirement payment figures in the 1998 transportation appropriations bill.

The Federal Railroad Administration awarded $5.2 million to the Oregon DOT for trackwork between Eugene and Vancouver, Wash., on August 13. This is part of an ISTEA-designated high-speed corridor.

The Surface Transportation Board is expected to rule on August 18 on the dispute between Amtrak and Guilford over the terms of the proposed Boston-Portland service.

Amtrak has been named a semi-finalist in the prestigious Innovations in American Government Awards by the Ford Foundation and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Amtrak was recognized for its innovative contract with Bombardier to build and maintain the new high-speed train sets.

The Virginia Railway Express commuter service has suffered terribly during recent CSX trackwork. July ridership was down 32%, due in part to lengthy repairs to an interlocking wiped out after a July 8 derailment, and a past-deadline trackwork project in Stafford County. Another cause is the recent opening by the state highway department of parallel express lanes along I-95. VRE says it may be in a "death spiral."