43
Officials: Broken brakes caused train to derail
By Ed Runyan
NEWTON FALLS
The Federal Railroad Administration says broken brakes on a CSX railroad freight car caused the 14-car derailment in downtown Newton Falls on March 28 that resulted in evacuation of as many as 200 residents.
The railroad administration, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, has released a report that says a part of the braking system on the loaded 14th car in the freight train was “dragging” below the car, which caused the car and 13 others to derail.
Only two of the 14 derailed cars were loaded with freight, the report said. Officials have said the loaded cars that derailed were hauling steel coils or a substance that could catch fire if it got wet but otherwise posed no danger.
The derailment, which occurred at 6:45 a.m. on an elevated track just north of the Newton Falls administration building near homes in the downtown business district, caused two train cars to fall off of the North Center Street trestle sideways onto Center Street.
No injuries were reported, though the Trumbull County Hazardous Materials team responded to the accident and evacuated nearby homes because of the potential that some of the derailed cars might contain hazardous materials. Officials said as many as 200 people were evacuated.
The train did contain cars carrying ammonia and chlorine, but none of them derailed. The only spill associated with the accident was about 200 gallons of diesel fuel that spilled from several refrigeration cars, officials said.
The report says the derailment caused $449,945 in damage to equipment and $120,000 to the track and other components of the rail line.
Rob Kulat, public affairs officer with the railroad administration, said no additional information was being released regarding the accident, such as what caused the brakes to fail.
There are times when accidents call into question the maintenance practices of the railroad, and those can result in fines to the railroad company, Kulat said, adding that such fines are usually determined later in the year, as part of an analysis of the overall operation of the company.
The report said the train involved in the March 28 accident was traveling 41 mph and was pulling 9,000 tons, not including two locomotives. The locomotives were pulling 43 loaded and 68 empty cars.
Because two of the derailed train cars hit the former B&O Depot, also known as the Franklin Street Station or “The Tower,” CSX demolished the 100-year-old building the day after the accident.
The railroad administration website contains train-accident data that indicates what accidents are the most and least common.
The brake problem involved with the Newton Falls accident, known as brake “rigging down or dragging,” is the 11th-most -ommon type of train- equipment problem reported by the railroad administration throughout the country since 2008. Twenty-two of 900 equipment accidents over that time involved this problem.
Equipment problems in general caused 13 percent of U.S. rail accidents since 2008. Human error and track problems were tied for first- and second-most common at 35 percent each. “Other” problems caused 14 percent of accidents, and signal problems caused 3 percent.