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Today’s blog was supposed to be about railroad rates and their arcane history.
After the Thursday morning accident in which a New Jersey Transit (NJT) passenger train derailed in Hoboken Terminal resulting in at least one fatality and a significant number of injuries, it seems somewhat mundane to discuss railroad rates.
As of this writing, the cause or causes of the accident are not known. Signal and track malfunctions have been almost entirely ruled out. No exact timeline has been released, so it is improper even to assume that the train, operating in push mode, entered the station with excessive speed. The pictures from the scene suggest speed, but everybody needs to remember that trains are heavy beasts, that momentum is a bitch, and that most passenger trains of three or more cars could probably crash through a track end barrier if rolling freely at ten mph, especially the type of barrier provided in Hoboken Terminal.
Since Thursday, three stories that bear additional scrutiny have surfaced.
The first is the story of the cooperation despite memory loss of engineer Thomas Grayling, a 29-year veteran of NJT. His reported last memory before waking up after the crash was of proceeding into the station trackage at ten miles per hour. To Engineer Grayling’s credit, early tests for substance abuse have come back negative. That traumatic memory loss causes people to lose anything from minutes to days prior to a serious trauma is well documented. Important to note: This story seems eerily similar to the reports from engineer Brian Bostian after the Amtrak 188 crash of May 2015. In that instance, he, too, remembers nothing of the moments up to and including the crash. Coincidence? Self-protection? The natural course of trauma? Answers to these questions may emerge, or, as in the case of Amtrak 188, remain a mystery.
Second is the reported failure of the pushing locomotive’s data recorder. At this writing, reports are coming in that the data recorder was not functioning. Nothing has been said about the cause of the non-functional condition. Questions abound, not the least of which is this: Was it supposed to be functioning? Law required a functioning data recorder in the cab of the train. In this case, the cab is at the front, far removed from the locomotive. Does the data recorder get turned on when the cab position is activated? What would a data recorder in the locomotive, at the back of the train, record that the cab recorder would not?
Which brings me to the third story: Access to the first car and cab. The investigators at the scene have been reluctant to enter the cab to retrieve its data recorder and the forward facing camera recordings, and rightly so. The crash triggered a partial collapse of the canopy over the adjacent platforms and concourse, and qualified engineers need to sign off on the safety, if the canopy is to be left in situ. If it’s just not safe, then work must begin to remove the hazard as soon as possible. If the whole building must come down, then somebody has to have enough big round ones to go in there and get the data. As a former insurance professional, I know I would probably have already been in there under orders of the insurers, so why can’t the investigators go in, too?
I can’t believe—and this is true of aircraft “black boxes,” too—with all of our advanced technology, wireless networks, Bluetooth, and other remote control stuff, we have not devised some sort of telemetry that can awaken, identify, and command a wireless download of the data contained in these recorders. What good is their being impervious to a crash, if they cannot be found or accessed after a crash?
I would also like to pick a bone with the general press. Many of them have shown a complete ignorance of what push-pull passenger service entails. Ladies and gentlemen, because the engineer is operating from the cab car at the front of the train, that does not make it the locomotive! It might behoove a check with Wikipedia before filing a story or just opening your mouth on air.
On a political note (everything is politics): I’m surprised that somebody in New Jersey hasn’t tried to blame Gov. Christie for this. Stay tuned.
My previous blogs on the subject of passenger rail safety and Positive Train Control (PTC) have been clear as to my position on both. When and if it becomes appropriate to add further comments because of the current accident, I will do so.
©2016 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com
(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)
