Officials will try to learn why two trains were going in opposite directions on the same stretch of track.
By JAMES THORNER
Published November 30, 2004
[Times photo: Dan McDuffie]
Photo: Workers remove wreckage after two CSX freight trains crashed early Monday morning near Old Lakeland Highway and Melrose Avenue near Dade City.
The black boxes in each locomotive, similar to those found in airliners, recorded the southbound train traveling at 28 mph, less than half its maximum speed of 60 mph. No data was available for the northbound train.
ZEPHYRHILLS - Federal investigators are trying to determine how two CSX freight trains wound up on the same track before they collided head-on in east Pasco County early Monday, killing one worker and injuring three.
The accident occurred about 2:25 a.m. near the Vitis Junction, tossing nearly 10 rail cars atop one another and killing 28-year-old Cedric Jones of Carol City, conductor on the northbound train.
Diesel fuel leaked from the locomotives and 30,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer spilled from derailed tanker cars, but authorities said the spills were not a direct threat to residents along the rural tracks.
"It's the stuff a contractor would put on your yard, but it's in heavy concentrations," CSX spokesman Gary Sease said.
Investigators had yet to confirm what caused the accident but CSX officials focused on several angles:
The behavior of the train crews at time of impact, the possibility of equipment failure, and the actions of a dispatcher in Jacksonville who operates signals and switches by computerized remote from a central console.
"Central to the investigation is what everyone was doing before the collision," Sease said.
Treated and released from East Pasco Medical Center, Zephyrhills, was the northbound train's engineer, E.E. Anderson, also of Carol City; and the crew aboard the southbound train, G.M. Whitehead of Lake Butler, and W.E. Taylor of Bartow, said hospital and CSX officials.
The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched two investigators from Atlanta.
One train, consisting of 136 cars of mixed freight pulled by two locomotives, was heading south from Waycross, Ga., to Tampa. The northbound train, also powered by two engines, was pulling 60 cars of gravel from Miami to Wildwood.
The crash scene at Old Lakeland Highway and Melrose Avenue is where the tracks fork, one branch veering to Tampa, the other to Miami.
"This is a junction point and you have trains intersecting from different directions," Sease said.
The black boxes in each locomotive, similar to those found in airliners, recorded the southbound train traveling at 28 mph, less than half its maximum speed of 60 mph. No data was available for the northbound train.
CSX operates 20 to 25 trains a day on that stretch of track. Engineers often slow locomotives to a crawl as they approach crossings near the accident scene, several neighbors said, but speeds tend to increase at night.
Amtrak passenger trains used the same route up to a month ago, when the company ended service to that area.
Frances Shine, who lives 100 yards from the line, was awakened by a bang about 2:25 a.m. but drifted back to sleep.
After sunrise she heard a commotion as fresh engines arrived to hitch up the undamaged sections of both trains and haul them off in opposite directions. Relieved the spill wasn't hazardous to humans, she worried she might not be so lucky next time.
"You don't always know what these trains are hauling," Shine said.
NTSB officials in Washington used the Zephyrhills crash as an opportunity to press the railroads to install automatic shutoffs in their locomotives.
Known as "positive train controls," electronic sensors bring a train to a stop in the event of near collision. They're most common on passenger trains in the northeastern United States.
"By and large the railroads are not doing it," NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said of installing the controls. "It's an expensive proposition ... but you're not just relying on the human element."
Crews were expected to work all night to clear the wreckage and repair the tracks. That section of the line, as well as the adjacent stretch of Lakeland Highway, were expected to stay closed until at least today.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
