Crew Member Killed in Texas Train Crash
Posted on: Thursday, 15 September 2005, 12:00 CDT
SHEPHERD, Texas - A freight train smashed into a second train that was stopped on a siding early Thursday, killing one crew member and derailing more than 20 cars, a company spokesman said.
Someone threw a switch that sent the moving train onto the siding, said Mark Davis, a spokesman for Union Pacific, which operated both trains. He said the FBI will help investigate, but criminal action is not believed to be involved.
"The focus of the investigation is why this switch was in the position it was to allow the train to go from one track to another," he said. "A person has to manually, physically move the switch."
Several hundred residents were evacuated as a precaution until authorities determined that tanker cars on one train were empty. Everyone was allowed back home within hours.
The collision happened shortly after midnight in downtown Shepherd, a town of 2,100 located 60 miles northeast of Houston. Three locomotives and 16 empty tankers on one train derailed, as did two locomotives and as many as five empty flatbed cars of the other train, Davis said.
Some diesel fuel leaked from the locomotives.
The worker who died was on the standing train, according to Davis. The other train had been was traveling from Pine Bluff, Ark., to Houston.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Railroad Administration and Union Pacific also were en route to the scene.
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On the Net:
Union Pacific: http://www.up.com/
Source: Associated Press/AP Online
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