Harlem Line Tragedy: Safety Systems at Crossing Were Working, Investigators Say

The safety systems at the grade crossing in Mount Pleasant were working right Tuesday night when a commuter train smashed into a Mercedes SUV on the tracks, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board have found.

“Today’s our first full day of the investigation and so there’s been a lot going on,” said NTSB vice-president Robert Sumwalt.

What he shared at a 5 p.m. briefing shows the extraordinary level of detail in this probe into the deadliest accident in Metro North history. Five train passengers in the first car, plus the car’s driver, died in the collision and the fire that ensued.

For example, a preliminary review of the event recorder data on the train has shown that as the train approached the grade crossing where the accident occurred, the train sounded the proper grade-crossing cadence on the horn.

“We’ve all heard it,” Sumwalt said, “Two long blasts, a short blast, followed by a long.”

Another item learned from the train’s event recorder: the train’s speed was 58 miles per hour. The track speed limit in that section of track is 60 mph, Sumwalt said.

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Their first interview with the train engineer, Steven Smalls, had just ended as the 5 p.m. briefing began, Sumwalt said, so he didn’t have a lot of information from it to share. But he did know one thing:

“The engineer reported that he saw the car moving onto the tracks,” Sumwalt said.

In fact, the train’s event recorder revealed that at 6:26:17 on Tuesday evening the engineer activated the emergency brake. After the emergency brake operation, the train horn sounded for 4 seconds. From the emergency brake application to the train stopping is about 950 feet.

“It took a little less than 30 seconds,” Sumwalt said.

The investigative team still has more to do to build its time-distance analysis, including measuring skid marks on the tracks.

They do know now that 39 seconds before the train occupied the crossing, the grade-crossing lights illuminated—the signal voltage was sufficient to provide sufficient light—and a few seconds later, the crossing gate activated as designed.

Investigators will seek information about the driver of the SUV, including how familiar she was with the controls on what news reports say was a new car. And they’ll continue to seek information from the Mercedes itself, though they have not obtained anything from it so far.

“It was severely impacted by impact damage and thermal damage,” Sumwalt said. “We will not give up.”

He said his team is coordinating with the MTA police to examine the first rail car, which was moved last night to a storage facility.

“We’re combing carefully through ash, debris and pieces of third rail that penetrated into that rail car,” he said. “It makes for a very lengthy investigative process because of the severely burnt-out condition of that car.”

Investigators also began interviewing witnesses—and some of the sources of information have come through the email address witness@ntsb.com that the NTSB shared with the media.

“People are contacting us and we are following up,” he said.

Also today they reviewed maintenance records and talked to Metro North crew, and learned the third rail in the wreckage area had been last inspected in December.

They are looking into another issue with the electrified third rail. It is a design unique to Metro North.

“Did that in some fashion contribute to the ability of the third rail to penetrate into the car?” Sumwalt asked rhetorically. “That’s certainly something we will look at.”

Doing a train accident investigation is like putting together a mosaic, he said.

“We’re going to get different pieces of information, take it all, assemble it, and see what that picture looks like,” he said. “We have a lot more information to obtain but we’re off to a good start.”

PHOTO: Train involved in Valhalla, NY, #MetroNorth accident at maintenance facility to be further examined/NTSB

MAP: Crash location/NTSB