Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1995 TAG: 9510110083
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The sabotage of an Amtrak train in the remote Arizona desert demonstrates the vulnerability of the nation's 140,000 miles of track, where vast stretches can go unpatrolled for days.
Railroad and union officials agree that little can be done to stop someone determined to sabotage tracks, though the union blames budget cuts that have reduced the number of maintenance workers and inspectors in recent years.
``Cutbacks have gotten so deep that everybody is doing more work. ... Some jobs go undone. Some are given short shrift,'' said Kent Turner, an administrator with the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees.
Turner said the number of miles per maintenance employee has increased from 5.92 miles in 1987 to 6.27 miles last year.
The stretch of track where the train derailed Monday is required to be inspected twice weekly and was last checked Thursday, said Mike Furtney, a spokesman for Southern Pacific Lines, which owns and operates the track.
A Southern Pacific freight train went through the area 18 hours before the derailment, he said.
That still would have given the saboteur plenty of time to remove a connecting bar between two pieces of track and wire the gap to thwart an electrical system that indicates a break in the line, officials said.
With tracks running through some of the most out-of-the-way parts of the country, and access roads in place to let workers reach the tracks, rails are vulnerable to sabotage, Furtney acknowledged.
``I don't know what you can do to prevent a similar thing if some nutball wants to do it,'' he said.
The Federal Railroad Administration sets the standards for inspections. The government requires tracks to be inspected either once or twice each week, depending on the amount of traffic and its weight.
Inspectors typically ride on the rails in a vehicle that Turner said would have been rocked by the sabotage that derailed Amtrak's Sunset Limited.
Amtrak has increased security on its tracks and advised other railroads of the precautions. Furtney said Southern Pacific has asked its workers to be on the lookout for unusual activity.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena said there had been no threats against rail transportation before the derailment, which killed a railroad worker and injured scores of other people.
The crash bore similarities to a 1939 act of sabotage that sent Southern Pacific's City of San Francisco plunging into a river in Nevada, killing 24 and injuring 108. No arrests were ever made.
by CNB