NJT wreck: NTSB now has “usable data”

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday, Oct. 6 that it obtained “usable data” from the event recorder and forward-facing video camera in the control (cab) car of New Jersey Transit train no. 1614, which crashed through a bumping post at Hoboken Terminal the morning of Sept. 29, killing a woman on the platform and injuring 108. It has released details downloaded from the recorders.

The information gathered from both recorders “is preliminary and subject to change as data is validated,” the NTSB said. “No analysis is provided in the facts released from the event and video recorder data extractions. The NTSB has not determined probable cause and cautions against drawing conclusions from these facts alone. Analysis of the findings from these recorders and from other facts gathered during our comprehensive investigation will take place after the factual record is complete. The investigation remains in the fact-gathering phase, which could take a year or more.”

The NTSB reported the following:

• Both recorders appear to have been working as designed, and captured the engineer’s entire trip that morning, including the accident sequence. The forward-facing, color video from the cab car of train 1614 is of good quality and includes audio from an exterior microphone.

• The forward-facing video showed the cab car colliding with and overriding the bumping post at the end of the track no. 5 platform at the Hoboken Terminal. A large flash was observed as the car collided with the panel just beyond the bumping post.

• The forward-facing video recorder captured the sound of one blast of the train’s horn about one minute before the collision, while the train was in the yard leading to the terminal. The train’s bell began sounding shortly afterward and continued until the end of the recording.

• The event recorder indicates the throttle increased from idle to the no. 4 position while the train was traveling about 8 mph, approximately 38 seconds before the collision. Train speed began to increase and reached a maximum of about 21 mph.

• According to the event recorder data, the throttle position went from #4 to idle just prior to the collision, and then engineer-induced emergency braking occurred less than one second before the collision with the bumping post.

• The event recorder shows train speed was about 21 mph when it collided with the bumping post. Event recorder speeds during the final seconds are consistent with train speed estimates obtained from the NTSB’s preliminary analysis of images from the forward-facing video camera.

The NTSB said a group consisting of technical experts from the NTSB and the parties to the investigation is scheduled to convene at NTSB headquarters in Washington D.C. on Oct. 11, “to continue to verify and validate the data recovered from both cab car recorders.”

“Based on the throttle and brake details the NTSB released, it’s clear that the engineer fell asleep, or ‘nodded off,’ awakened just before the train hit the bumping post, and put the train into emergency braking, too late to avoid a collision,” an observer and retired railroad operating officer told Railway Age. “His hand was on the throttle, holding it in the idle position. When he nodded off, his hand pushed the throttle into notch 4. Picture yourself sitting at your desk, with your hands on your computer keyboard, typing out a document in Word. You’re tired and nod off. When you awaken, there’s a long stream of characters in the document, perhaps one letter, showing that your fingers held down a particular keystroke while you were sleeping.”

The NTSB has interviewed engineer Thomas Gallagher, who said that he did not remember the crash but that he was rested when he started his shift that morning.

NJ Transit on Oct. 5 issued a bulletin order requiring the conductor of a train operating cab-car-first to move to the operating cab to assist the engineer and serve as a second set of eyes and ears during the last segment of trips into Hoboken Terminal and Atlantic City Terminal. The bulletin order says, “The conductor and the engineer are to focus exclusively on the railroad, calling signals, checking the route and ensuring that the train is operated safely in compliance.”

Gallagher was alone in the operating cab of 1614, and the conductor was in his customary position, further back among the passengers, preparing to open the doors once the train came to a stop. The Comet V cab car’s head end, the operating cab, is equipped with a single door on its left-hand side. That door is not equipped with a trap and steps for disembarking on a low-level platform, so passengers cannot exit the train through the cab car door. But even on high-level platforms, passengers are generally not permitted to enter or exit the train through the operating cab. This procedure applies to all NJ Transit cab cars.

NJT’s two-people-in-the cab rule received some pushback from Stephen Burkert, General Chairman of SMART-TD Local 60, which represents conductors. “They’re looking to have a safer railroad, which I fully agree with,” Burkert told The New York Times. “Safety is always first for my members and the riding public.” However, he said, “What it technically does is put more job responsibility on the conductor. . . . You have effectively doubled the work responsibilities for the conductor.”