BY RUTH ROBINETT AND LINDA MARCUS

NEWARK, New Jersey - On the morning of November 23 at 6:30 a.m., an Amtrak mail and passenger train eastbound from Newark to New York derailed on an 88-year-old swing bridge in Secaucus, New Jersey.

Two engines, a baggage car and three passenger coaches - half the train set - crashed 30 feet down an embankment into a marshy ravine. Safety guide rails on the Portal Bridge kept the train upright until the lead cars had traversed the bridge, although the train was off the rails.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) initial investigation agreed with union officials on-site that the immediate cause of the derailment was a broken connecting plate on the running rail, where the miter joints open and close to allow movement of the bridge.

A mechanism lifts the bridge structure up away from the stationary rail before it pivots 90 degrees to allow river traffic through. The bridge apparently closed incompletely and the miter rail sat on top of the connecting rail, touching but not aligned. This acted as a ramp from which the train's wheel shot, and landed on the ties, but inside the safety rails on the 100 feet high bridge.

Some 32 passengers of the 108 people aboard - 16 employees and 16 others - suffered minor injuries, mainly sprained necks and backs, though two off-duty union members were hospitalized for several days. The operating engineer received lacerations and 13 stitches.

As Amtrak's Mail 12 Train tumbled southward, it fouled the adjoining westbound track and side-swiped an Amtrak train en route to Richmond, Virginia, with another 100 plus passengers aboard. The mail train's track was bent and pulled off the main line downhill, and the overhead catenary wires were ripped out on both tracks, shutting down rail travel here for 24 hours. This section of Amtrak- owned railroad services New Jersey Transit commuter trains as well; combined it carries more than 300 trains a day, one of the heaviest trafficked pieces of territory in the country.

The engineer was running at 60 mph in 70 mph territory through a green (clear) signal indication. In the case of a break in the rail, the system is supposed to display a red stop signal. But the automatic signal system read the misaligned rail as a connected rail because the contact made a complete circuit.

Earlier that night, the bridge tender reported trouble opening the Portal Bridge for a tug to pass. A Building & Bridges electrical inspector found nothing amiss during the night-time visual inspection. Both union employees were taken out of service (suspended) pending the investigation and drug and alcohol testing. Generally, the regular schedule for inspection of these moveable bridges is every two weeks. The Portal Bridge opens and closes 3 or 4 times a day.

The FRA did agree to "inspect" all of the nation's 200 or so moving bridges by December 31. Edward English, the agency's director of safety, said the bridges had worked well for decades. "We're going to be looking for any problem that may exist, but frankly, I don't expect to find any," English told the New York Times.

All moveable bridges are fairly old since new bridge technology builds them high enough for river traffic to pass beneath them. The Northeast has the highest concentration of moveable bridges in the country, with a total of 36 between Washington and Boston.

The initial reaction by co-workers in the New York crew base was one of relief that the injuries suffered by passengers and fellow workers were less severe than they could have been. There was a furious sharing of names of employees "deadheading" (commuting to work on Amtrak) on the Mail 12, the earliest train east to New York Penn Station to make their various job assignments.

The framework of a deteriorating railroad infrastructure, increasing pressure from rail traffic, and declining operating capital from the state and federal governments, which place a low priority on public transportation, set the stage for future disasters. Mike Flora, a longtime engineer from Washington pointed out "job cuts in Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees means less maintenance and inspection will more and more have a cost in the safety of the traveling public and the railroad employees."

Rider demand is often higher than Amtrak's limited equipment can meet. As a result we find crowded conditions on certain peak trains. Conductor R.P. Riggs from Washington commented that "if this accident had taken place a few days later, during the heaviest travel days of the year for Amtrak [the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend], there would have been people poured into the coaches like sardines. Then the seriousness of this accident would be clear.... There would be bodies all over the place in Secaucus. Amtrak got lucky."

The underlying cause of the accident was exposed when several New York Times articles revealed industry and agency debates on whether to use current laser and other sensing systems on heavily used bridges. Clarence V. Monin, international president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive engineers said "The technology is there to detect bridge misalignments. These accidents don't have to happen."

The FRA, the agency that could require the devices, gets to the heart of the matter saying they cost too much.

The NTSB first recommended some kind of sensor in 1979 after a derailment in Utah. Ideas advocated range from the mounting of a monitor on the magnetic field on either end of a bridge to detect movement on the rails, to an electric eye technology which is described as "no more complicated than a garage door opener."

Advocates of the sensor systems say accidents like this one could have been prevented, as well as the most tragic accident in Amtrak's history. In 1993, a train plunged into the Alabama Bayou eight minutes after a barge hit a railroad bridge, knocking the rail several feet out of place. This wreck killed 47 people and injured 103 others.

After the Alabama disaster, Congress ordered the FRA to consider various sensor proposals. The FRA, which has the power to impose safety regulations, concluded, "the cost was too high because there were only a few rail accidents a year that involve bridges," and they have not required them.

The FRA and the NTSB both function within the framework of government regulations designed to protect big business' profitability. This is codified under a 20- year-old presidential order that mandates that the railroads are not permitted to impose new rules unless they meet strict calculations of cost and number of lives it would save.

Linda Marcus and Ruth Robinett are members of UTU Local 1370 at Amtrak.  
 
 
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