Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 17, 1994 TAG: 9405170114
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SMITHFIELD, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
Things didn't work that way Monday. He ended up in the very last car of Amtrak's southbound Silver Meteor - the only car left on the track after the train struck a truck trailer full of cat-box filler that shifted off a passing freight train.
The derailment killed one person and injured more than 350 others.
``We felt a tremendous bump,'' said Hutchinson of Wilton, Conn. ``I started to slide out of my seat under the seat in front of me. Then we felt two more thuds.''
Hutchinson, an Amtrak regular because his wife doesn't like to fly, was among hundreds of the 438 people aboard who suffered minor injuries: He skinned his knees. About 75 people were treated at Johnston Memorial Hospital and seven were taken to Duke University Medical Center.
Killed was engineer Brooks Woodward, 41, of Laurinburg, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black.
The Amtrak train derailed about 4:45 a.m. about 25 miles southeast of Raleigh.
Amtrak President Thomas M. Downs said in Washington that the truck trailer being carried on a northbound CSX freight train had shifted on its train flatbed and was jutting into the path of the Amtrak train.
Downs said the Amtrak train was traveling about 70 mph and the CSX train about 35 mph when the Amtrak lead locomotive made contact with the trailer and derailed. All but one of the Amtrak's 19 cars derailed, but only one of the freight train's 52 cars left the track.
Deputy Lt. R.C. Medlin, who came upon passengers coming through woods lining the tracks, said most passengers were asleep when the wreck happened.
``From the look of some of the seats in there, the positions they were in, it was a hell of a rude awakening,'' he said.
Some 286 people were taken to a Red Cross shelter at the National Guard Armory, where telephones were set up and medical care and travel help was provided. Some passengers were put on buses to their destinations and others were put in hotels to await new trains.
Most of the passengers on the train were heading to Florida, including 43 children who were members of a choir from Madison Middle School in Miami. Eleven children and five of the six adults in the group were injured, said chaperone Fay Hepburn, the one adult who wasn't hurt. After the accident, the children who weren't hurt sat on the armory lawn singing and drawing to pass the time.
The accident was the fifth for Amtrak in a little more than a year. The worst was in September in Mobile, Ala. Forty-seven people were killed there when a rail bridge was knocked out of line by a barge, sending the train plunging into a bayou.
Black attributed the accidents to bad luck.
``There have been seemingly an inordinate number of incidents with Amtrak trains the past 14 months,'' he said. ``There is no similarity between any two of them except they involve outside forces, outside the control of Amtrak. It is clearly bad luck.''
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the scene late Monday morning. How the trailer was anchored probably will be part of the NTSB's investigation, said CSX spokesman Jay Westbrook.
Amtrak estimates that $3.6 million worth of its equipment was destroyed, Black said. Westbrook estimated CSX's damages at $180,000.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB