Kevin McCaffrey hires train to look for

Nassau OTB SENIORITY LIST
Is Teamsters Local 707 the only union that you know of that does not provide its members (at Nassau OTB) a Seniority List?

As Nassau OTB Branches close a Seniority List would seem to be desirable for members to have?
You don't have to crash a train to make the Seniority List?
 

A Sharp Curve and a Train’s Speed

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

It was unclear how fast a Metro-North train was going when it derailed Sunday morning near the Spuyten Duyvil station. Officials said the crash’s cause might not be known definitively for days. More Photos »

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and PATRICK McGEEHAN

Published: December 1, 2013

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Save
• Email
• Share
• Print
• Reprints
• 

To any engineer on the Metro-North Railroad’s Hudson line, the stretch where a train derailed on Sunday was well known: It includes one of the sharpest curves in the system, with tracks swinging east along the Harlem River, splitting from an Amtrak corridor that remains on a relative straightaway beside the Hudson River.

Multimedia

Map

An Overview of the Metro-North Train Derailment in the Bronx

Governor Cuomo Explains Next Steps

Photographs

A Derailment in the Bronx

Site of Metro-North Train Crash

Related

• Focus Turns to Investigation in Fatal Bronx Train Crash (December 2, 2013)

• Flying Bodies, Broken Bones and Screams After Cars Leave the Track (December 2, 2013)

• Man Going to Set Up Rockefeller Center Tree, a Nurse and a Paralegal Are Among the Dead (December 2, 2013)

Connect With NYTMetro

Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for news and conversation.

The maximum allowable speed, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, falls to 30 miles per hour, from 70 m.p.h., for trains going along the curve. Rates are often even slower for local trains stopping at the nearby Spuyten Duyvil station (the train that derailed was not scheduled to stop there).

It is unclear how fast the train was going on Sunday morning, but an M.T.A. official said the train’s operator reported that when he realized it was heading into the curve too quickly, he “dumped the brakes,” an emergency maneuver, and though the train slowed somewhat, it then derailed. It was too early to tell whether the investigation would corroborate that account, and if so, whether the operator or another factor was responsible for the speed.

Officials said the crash’s cause might not be known definitively for days, if not longer. But the derailment raised a series of questions about what might have contributed to the only accident resulting in passenger deaths in Metro-North’s history.

Dumping brakes is a last-resort move typically reserved for averting collisions with other trains or cars stuck at crossings, said Grady C. Cothen, a retired federal railroad regulator. He said it involved slamming the emergency brakes on the wheels on all cars at once. To achieve that, the operator quickly releases, or “dumps,” all air from the train’s brake lines, he said. “If he did that, then it would have been an act of considerable alarm,” Mr. Cothen said.

Officials identified the operator as William Rockefeller, who was injured. According to a seniority list posted by his union, his service dates back to 1999. There was no answer at his home in Germantown, N.Y., on Sunday night; a neighbor of his parents said Mr. Rockefeller worked in his father’s construction business in Rhinebeck, N.Y., before joining Metro-North.

An engineer who has worked for 26 years on the Hudson line, who requested anonymity because he did not want to be seen as involving himself in the case of a colleague, said that despite the sharpness of the curve, the stretch was “not an especially dangerous area.”

“It’s like driving your car,” he said. “When you’re coming up to a curve, you slow down.”

The train, which was heading south to Grand Central Terminal, was operated under a so-called push-pull model: For northbound trips, it is pulled from the front by a locomotive; for southbound trips, it is pushed from the rear.

The setup has been adopted widely because of its practicality: Trains do not need to turn around if the locomotive can remain in the same position at the end of a line. The arrangement is used often on the Metro-North Railroad, said Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the transportation authority.

But rail safety experts have at times questioned the performance of push-pull systems in the event of derailments, wondering whether accidents were exacerbated by the force from the rear.

The concerns were particularly pronounced after a fatal commuter rail derailment in California in 2005, which led officials to prohibit passengers from sitting in the first 11 seats of the front car when a train was being pushed.

In a 2006 report, the Federal Railroad Administration found that accident records suggested “a higher fatality rate for occupants of cab car-led trains,” compared with passengers in “conventional locomotive-led trains.” But the report said there was no statistically significant difference among the derailment histories of the different operating models.

Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman for the authority, called the push-pull trains “a stalwart of our fleet,” adding that if the National Transportation Safety Board had reservations, “they wouldn’t let us use them.”

The authority also intends to install a system known as positive train control, which can slow trains before they go around bends like the one at Spuyten Duyvil. It is already used by other agencies.

It had already been a difficult year for Metro-North, which has had a reputation as one of the country’s most reliable railroads.

In September, a power failure in Mount Vernon, N.Y., upended service on the New Haven line, leading the authority to take the rare step of offering credits to affected riders.

On May 17, two trains on the New Haven line collided during the Friday evening rush after one derailed near Fairfield, Conn. At least 70 people were injured.

Less than two weeks later, a track foreman was struck and killed in West Haven, Conn. The safety board said in an “urgent safety recommendation” that a trainee rail traffic controller had opened a section of track without proper clearance.

The recent episodes have occurred during a spate of departures that have left several positions either vacant or filled by less-experienced employees.

Retirements of high-level employees have been common, officials said, because retirees can receive maximum pension payments after 30 years of service.

“It’s been a bad year,” said William Henderson, the executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the transportation authority. “You can’t get away from that.”