Hurled projectiles have been a problem in North Philadelphia for generations.

MAY 16, 2015

Workers at the site of the Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia on Wednesday. Investigators found damage to the windshield. Credit Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency

PHILADELPHIA, PA

In the dark blocks of crumbling rowhouses pushed up against vacant factories along Glenwood Avenue, a group of young men hanging out on a stoop on a recent night said it was easy to sneak onto the nearby railroad tracks.

“There’s fences, but a lot of times they are falling down,” said a 16-year-old with long hair and a thin mustache who gave only his first name, Isaac. “A lot of people go down, creepy people, bums — they throw rocks, they throw bottles, but usually it’s no big deal.”

Nevertheless, the possibility that a flying object hit an Amtrak train before it lurched off the rails Tuesday in Philadelphia has unnerved riders and drawn increased public scrutiny to the safety along that stretch of track. Federal and railway officials say being struck by rocks, bricks and even bullets is a longstanding problem for trains in the country’s rail systems. While not speculating on the cause of Tuesday’s accident, a retired Amtrak engineer and a former transportation safety official with the federal government each said that a projectile striking a train would be a dangerous distraction for an engineer.

The tracks near the site of an Amtrak train derailment are easily accessible to trespassers. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times

Investigators have not assigned a cause or blame for the crash of Amtrak’s Northeast Regional Train 188 as it made its way to New York from Washington. Eight passengers were killed and more than 200 people, including members of the crew, were injured.

The engineer, Brandon Bostian, told investigators that he had no recollection of anything after passing the North Philadelphia station. Around the same time, projectiles also hit two other trains in the area, breaking windows.

Getting “rocked,” as locomotive engineers call it, is so common on the Northeast Corridor that trains long had metal grills over their windshields to act as armor. These days, thick glass is specifically designed to withstand the impact of a cinder block. Amtrak officials say trains are pelted in the neighborhoods around the crash site monthly.

As investigators looked into whether this old problem may have played a part in the Amtrak crash, federal officials were taking steps to try to improve safety along the Northeast Corridor, the nation’s busiest passenger rail line. On Saturday, the Federal Railroad Administration announced that it had instructed Amtrak to increase the use of technology that would have automatically slowed the train before it could derail. The system is currently in use only in portions of the rail system.

The technology, called automatic train control, measures the speed of a passing train and alerts the engineer if the train is moving too fast. If the engineer does not slow the train, the system applies the brakes.

It is in use on Amtrak’s southbound tracks near the crash site, a rail yard northeast of Philadelphia known as Frankford Junction, but a federal official familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was not in place on the northbound tracks because trains headed south had to decelerate more drastically at the curve.

Automatic train control is less sophisticated than the positive train control system that federal regulators have said must be installed on all passenger railways. Positive train control uses global positioning system technology to track a train’s location, and can enforce any speed limit. Seven years ago, Congress mandated that positive train control be in place around the country by the end of 2015, but is considering a delay until 2020 — a move urged by passenger and freight rail officials — because its rollout has been a challenge.

The Federal Railroad Administration on Saturday also ordered Amtrak to beef up safety signage and to analyze all stretches of track along the Northeast Corridor where trains must slow down for a curve to determine if safety can be improved.

“These are just initial steps, but we believe they will immediately improve safety for passengers on the Northeast Corridor,” Sarah Feinberg, the acting administrator of the agency, said in a statement. “As we learn more from the ongoing investigation of this derailment, we will take additional steps and enforcement actions as necessary.”

Railroad tracks are private property where trespassers are supposed to be controlled by transit police patrols.

But residents of North Philadelphia say old fencing in their deteriorating neighborhoods provides easy access to the rails, where the police rarely venture. Bottles, bricks, tires, old bicycles, cinder blocks and other urban detritus pile up by the tracks, along with people who have nowhere else to go.

“Bums be a lot back there, stumbling around all high,” said Carmen Marie, a lifelong resident, “crackheads, folks shooting up, doing whatever they do, throwing things.”

She pointed across Glenwood Avenue to a shadowy, glass-strewn vacant lot, where rusty fencing topped with razor wire had broad gaps that entered into the graffiti-covered corridors of the railroad right of way.

Homeless people live along the tracks, she said.

Late Friday night, after the National Transportation Safety Board disclosed the possibility that a projectile might have struck Amtrak Train 188 before it crashed, a reporter was able to walk onto the tracks through broken fences and some places with no fence at all. Besides drifts of trash that lay thick along the rails, and the spent cardboard tubing of flying fireworks, were tons of fist-size rocks that make up the railway ballast, offering an endless supply of ammunition for would-be rock throwers.

The problem is not limited to Philadelphia or urban centers, engineers say, and usually does little damage, but the impact can be disorienting.

“I’ve had a brick in the windshield before,” Doug Riddell, a retired Amtrak engineer in Ashland, Va., said in a telephone interview Friday. “It scares you. It’s like a bomb going off. It startles you. Suddenly, you can’t see in front of you.”

Though being struck by flying objects is typically not a serious safety concern, it is a common occurrence for train crews. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times

Hurled projectiles have been a problem in North Philadelphia for generations.

In 1905, a three-pound iron plumb bob hit a train carrying President Theodore Roosevelt in the stretch where Amtrak 188 apparently was hit, and “crashed through the stained-glass transom,” according to a New York Times article from the time. Railway officials at the time said stones often hit trains in the area, sometimes injuring passengers.

The president “passed it off as the wanton act of an irresponsible person,” but quickly had the curtains drawn.

A spate of projectiles apparently hit trains in North Philadelphia the night of the crash.

A Trenton-bound Septa regional commuter train was struck around 9:12 p.m. near the North Philadelphia station, breaking the windshield and disabling the train.

Alfred Price, a documentary filmmaker, was in the train’s front car when he heard a loud boom and felt the train come to a stop. No one was injured, but when passengers knocked on the door of the engineer’s compartment, the engineer emerged dazed, Mr. Price said in a telephone interview on Friday. “The window was smashed. It was shattered,” he said. “He didn’t really know what was going on. He was in shock.”

As the Septa passengers waited for a replacement train, they watched Train 188 pass by.

Investigators have said that Train 188 was traveling at 106 miles an hour — more than twice the speed limit — moments before the crash. They announced Friday that they had found a fist-size circular area of impact on the left side of the train’s windshield. Officials said the F.B.I. had been called in to help with a forensic investigation.

Shortly before the crash — around the same time the Septa train was hit by an object — a southbound Amtrak Acela train was also hit by a projectile, shattering a side passenger window.

Passengers told Philadelphia magazine that the impact had happened north of the North Philadelphia station, the same area where, investigators say, Amtrak Train 188 might have been hit.

At a news conference on Friday, Robert L. Sumwalt, a transportation safety board official who is leading the investigation in to the crash, said that an assistant conductor had reported that shortly before the crash she believed she had heard a radio exchange between Mr. Bostian, the engineer of Train 188, and the engineer on the Septa train regarding projectiles. The conductor, who was working in the cafe car — the last in a seven-car train — said that the Septa engineer reported his train had been “hit by a rock or shot at” and she believed that Mr. Bostian replied that his train had been struck, too. Seconds later, the conductor said she heard a rumbling and felt the train leaning as her car went over on its side.

Earlier in the week, Mayor Michael Nutter dismissed the significance of other trains being hit by objects, saying at a news conference on Wednesday, “Different place, different train, nothing to do with this tragedy here.”

But Mark Rosenker, a former N.T.S.B. chairman, said the impact from a thrown object could have affected the engineer and led to the crash.

“He could have been startled to a point of distraction to lose situational awareness and forget that he was supposed to slow down instead of accelerating,” Mr. Rosenker said in an interview Friday.

A spokeswoman for the mayor declined to comment, saying, “There is nothing more for him to say on this matter.”

Karl Edler, a retired engineer who drove the line hundreds of times, said an impact could help explain the wreck. When a train pulls out of the North Philadelphia station, the engineer usually twists the throttle “up to notch eight, which is engineer-speak for wide open,” he said.

It is about three miles to the curve where Amtrak 188 derailed.

“Usually, you just leave the throttle open until you get up to 80 miles per hour, then put on the brake for the curve,” he said. “Seems reasonable that something happened right about that time he would have started slowing down that kept him from taking the throttle off. He was startled by the impact or whatever. And by the time he realized it, it was too late.”

Source: nytimes.com