Equipment, human factors probed in Canton rail accident
By Noah Bierman and Milton Valencia, Globe Staff
CANTON -- Transit police, federal investigators, and others spent today trying to reconstruct a rush-hour commuter crash Tuesday that injured 150 people. Their goal: to determine how a runaway freight car rolled nearly three miles from a Stoughton lumberyard into the path of a commuter rail train in Canton.
Some investigators interviewed employees of Cohenno Inc., the lumber yard that had received the runaway car and five others as part of a Tuesday shipment from CSX Transportation.
"The primary focus of the investigation right now is on the actions of the [Cohenno lumberyard] employees, who are not supposed to be moving freight cars," said Joe Pesaturo, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
The probe is also examining the handbrakes used to secure the freight cars and a device on the tracks called a "derail" that is supposed to push runaway trains off the tracks before they risk a collision. Investigators have not said whether the derail malfunctioned, had been improperly set, or whether the freight car was traveling too fast out of the yard and could not be stopped.
"They have a derail siding, which obviously didn't work as intended," said George Casey, chairman of the Untited Tranportation Union. Casey represents the CSX conductor who delivered the lumber car to Cohenno. He said the conductor did his part to properly secure the car.
Andrew Cohenno, whose father owns the lumber company, said his employees did not move the freight car while it was on their property, held on an auxiliary train track called a "siding." The wood on the car was left unwrapped, he said. When they saw the car roll away, they placed a call to Stoughton Police.
"We're trying to help as much as we can with the investigation," Cohenno said. It is unclear who from the company made a 911 call at 5:11 p.m. But on a tape released by the MBTA, a man identifiying himself as "Cohenno Incorporated" makes several pleas to a 911 dispatcher in an attempt to explain the problem.
The engineer driving Train 917 was aware of the runway freight car, had stopped his locomotive, and was in the process of putting it in reverse, Pesaturo said. The car struck the train, which was carrying 300 passengers
Engineer Ronald Gomes had just 20 seconds once he saw the runaway freight car barreling around the bend. Gerry DeModena, the foreman who supervised the train crew, said Gomes "very well could have opted to get out of that cab and run."
Instead the engineer stood by his post and radioed for permission to move the train into reverse, a futile attempt to avoid the fast-moving freight car. Before he could act, the car slammed the commuter train with force great enough to knock Gomes "all over the cab, off the walls, all over the deck," DeModena said this afternoon at a press conference.
Gomes, 61, is recovering from what were described as facial injuries, according to the MBTA and the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Rail Company, the company that runs the commuter rail service for the MBTA. The conductor, Richard Platt, 44, and the assistant conductor, Christopher Leaman, 39, were both treated for minor injuries and released from the hospital Tuesday night.
The crash occurred about a half-mile north of the Canton Junction station at about 5:20 p.m..
"We knew we were coming into Canton Junction, and suddenly the train stopped," said Tony Phillips, a 42-year-old passenger who works for a Boston advertising firm and lives in Stoughton. "All of a sudden, there was a bang, a huge explosion. People were screaming, 'Oh, my God, what happened?' "
Everyone on the train who was standing fell to the floor, Phillips said.
Dozens of emergency workers from around the region carried passengers and crew members away from the tracks on stretchers, rushing them to area hospitals. Nearby residents saw passengers walking through the adjacent woods with head injuries, some with severe bleeding, looking dazed.
Although none of the injuries was life-threatening, the large number of cuts, bruises, and neck and back injuries forced emergency workers to use buses when they ran out of ambulance space.
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