Did third rail add to tragedy?
Electrified section of track broke into multiple pieces, speared train car
It was a hellish scenario investigators had never seen before: 400 feet of electrified third rail snapped into 12 pieces and speared a Metro-North train during a fiery collision with an SUV. Now officials want to know whether the rail’s unusual design explains why the crash was so deadly.
The 29-foot pieces went through the first car of the train “like daggers going into the heart of that chamber,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Friday after touring the blackened, mangled wreckage.
The SUV driver and five train passengers, including a man who grew up in the town of Poughkeepsie, were killed Tuesday evening in the rush-hour collision in Valhalla, about 20 miles north of New York City. The SUV driver, Ellen Brody, had stopped on the tracks,
between the lowered crossing gates, for reasons still unclear to investigators.
Metro-North is believed to be the only U.S. commuter railroad that uses the “under-running” or “under-riding” configuration: A metal “shoe” slips underneath the third rail rather than skimming along the top.
Some have questioned whether the violent collision could have caused the shoe to act as a crowbar that lifted the third rail toward the train.
“This has never happened before, and this is a rare configuration of a third rail. Do those two add up to the explanation for this terrible, terrible tragedy? Very possibly,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, calling the design “a real concern.”
National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Robert Sumwalt said Friday the agency aims to answer that question among many others from the crash — a rare and unusually fiery instance of passenger deaths among the thousands of train-auto collisions each year.
“We will figure out the crash dynamics as far as how that could occur,” Sumwalt said. He said the agency also is exploring when power was cut to the third rail, which is designed to be de-energized if it breaks.
As for whether anyone was killed or maimed by the 12 spears, NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said that is not yet known and that investigators will have to create a diagram of where people were and collect information on their injuries.
A railroad expert said he “under-running” design of the third rail has been used for decades because it avoids the problems caused by ice building up on top of the third rail.
But it’s impossible to say whether it was a factor in the fire without testing how the “over-running” system would have reacted in the same situation, said Steve Ditmeyer, a former Federal Railroad Administration official who teaches railway management at Michigan State University.
“One doesn’t expect a train to push an automobile against the third rail,” no matter how it’s configured, he said.
But to transportation lawyer Andrew Maloney, the third rail “is probably the most important issue in the accident.” The design could have caused the shoe to act as a “crowbar,” said Maloney, who represents victims of a 2013 MetroNorth derailment.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road, declined to comment, citing the NTSB investigation.
The third rail is a common feature of subway systems. But among the nation’s 28 commuter railroads, only Metro-North and the Long Island Railroad, both operated by the New York City-based Metropolitan Transportation Authority, use third rail systems at all, according to the American Public Transit Association.