On October 12, 2003, about 4:38 p.m., central daylight time, westbound NortheastIllinois Regional Commuter Railroad (Metra) train 519 derailed its two locomotives and fivepassenger cars as it traversed a crossover from track 1 to track 2 near Control Point 48th Street inChicago, Illinois.1 The train derailed at a recorded speed of about 68 mph. The maximum authorized speed through the crossover was 10 mph. There were about 375 passengers and a crew of 3 on board. As a result of the accident, 47 passengers were transported to eight local hospitals. Of these, 44 were treated and released, and 3 were admitted for observation. Damages from the accident exceeded $5 million.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the derailment of Metra train 519 was the locomotive engineer’s loss of situational awareness minutes before the derailment because of his preoccupation with certain aspects of train operations that led to his failure to observe and comply with signal indications. Contributing to the accident was the lack of a positive train control system at the accident location. The locomotive engineer’s most critical task was to observe wayside signals and comply with signal indications; had he done so, the accident would not have happened. Therefore, the Safety Board attempted to determine what might have caused the engineer to fail to comply with two critical and consecutive wayside signals.
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On February 20, 1996, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), in response to two fatal train accidents, issued Emergency Order No. 20, Notice No. 1, (EO20) to reduce the risks that train passengers and crews face under certain operating conditions. EO20 was aimed at commuter and intercity passenger operators and freight railroads, where push-pull passenger 3 operations are conducted. FRA’s EO20 requirement for calling out certain signal indications is intended to add safety redundancy by involving other crewmembers in helping to ensure compliance with wayside signals in the absence of the protection provided by cab signals, automatic train stop, or an automatic train control system. In this situation, the approach diverging and diverging clear signals required the accident engineer to slow the train to 10 mph so that it could negotiate the crossover. The Safety Board understands that these signals did not meet FRA’s definition of signal indications that must be called out.
Metra had designated several miles of track near where the accident occurred as a terminal area that was exempt from the requirement for signal callouts. Within this defined terminal area, there is no wayside cab signal equipment, positive train control, or other safety redundant system to compensate for human errors. Further highlighting the potentially severe consequences of failing to comply with signal indications through this area is the existence of a freight railroad crossing less than 2 miles from Chicago.
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...The engineer said that after he applied the emergency brakes and it became apparent that the train was uncontrollable, he attempted to contact the dispatcher on the locomotive radio but was unable to do so because '[this was] a Conrail radio, and evidently they're not compatible with ours [CSXT].' Postaccident testing of the engineer's radio and subsequent investigation revealed that the radio worked as designed.
U.S. railroads use five basic styles of locomotive radios, each of which is compatible with the others, regardless of railroad. Except for superficial details such as dials, touch pads, and channel display, all railroad radios are similar; that is, they use the same frequencies or channels. Timetable instructions list the particular channels for emergency use and/or for calls to the dispatcher. Had the engineer properly set the channel for the dispatcher and then pushed the correct keypad number, either '9' for emergency or '5' for the dispatcher, he would have reached the dispatcher.
As a result of the engineer's failure to activate the two-way EOT and his apparent inability to effectively use the locomotive radio, the Safety Board has recommended to CSXT that it revise its locomotive engineer training and requalification programs as necessary to, among other objectives, ensure that those programs address both the emergency use of the twoway EOT emergency switch and the use of all styles of locomotive radios, especially their use during emergency situations to call the dispatcher...
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