Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 4, 1995 TAG: 9504040086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Jon Manetta, vice president of Norfolk Southern's transportation department in Norfolk, said Monday that the four were dismissed last week ``for failure to handle the train in compliance with signal indications displayed for their train.''
Translation: ``They went through a stoplight,'' Manetta said.
The railroad maintains that the crew members went through two signals telling them to stop their westbound train until an eastbound train had passed. Instead, the two trains wound up on a collision course that derailed several locomotives and rail cars and damaged equipment and cargo.
The four fired crew members are a brakeman, a conductor, an engineer and an engineer-trainee. Manetta said the trainee was at the controls of the ``112'' as it approached a switch point on the Radford side of the New River. It collided with a train crossing a rail bridge from the Pulaski County side.
The switch point is where the double track merges into a single track.
NS declined to name the fired workers, who were suspended immediately after the wreck but not let go until after the company concluded its investigation.
Manetta said the workers may appeal the company's decision through their unions.
NS spokesman Bob Auman said Monday that the two crew members on the eastbound train still have not returned to work because of injuries related to the derailment. All six crewmen filed injury reports after the wreck, he said, but none was hospitalized.
The United Transportation Union, which represents some crew members, contends that the crash resulted from a failure in the signaling system. Last month, the union's David Benson confirmed that the four men had passed polygraph tests supporting their report of a signal malfunction. The crew members also tested negative for alcohol or drugs, he said.
Benson also has maintained that transcripts of recorded radio transmissions verify that the crew called out the first of two go-ahead signals - as federal rules require - as the train approached the switch point.
But Manetta said the signals were tested and found to be in working order. ``No malfunction was found in the signal system,'' he said.
Benson said in March that he was worried that some ``very obscure'' problem - perhaps in a computerized dispatching system - could have caused a signal malfunction, and that it could happen again.
The two-month probe involved the railroad, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Railroad Administration and unions representing the railroad workers. The federal agencies have not yet issued formal reports.
NS risk manager David Fries said Monday that the losses were ``self-insured'' by the railroad.
by CNB