NJ Transit train crashes into Hoboken station, multiple fatalities reported

[brooklynite]

Source: Newark Star-Ledger

A New Jersey Transit train crashed into the Hoboken station Thursday morning killing at least three, injuring more than 100 and causing massive damage according to reports.

There is heavy damage inside the terminal, according to WNBC-4.

Photos from the scene show a partial roof collapse and debris scattered about near where the Pascack Valley Line train crashed into the platform.

A spokeswoman for NJ Transit said train No. 1614 crashed into the Hoboken train station around 8:45 a.m. It left Spring Valley, N.Y. at 7:23 a.m.





Read more: http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2016/09/several_hurt_in_train_crash_at_hoboken_station.html#incart_big-photo

[blaze]

1. Yikes. nt

[whistler162]

2. WOW.... Silver Streak anyone....

hope none of the injuries are serious.

Thought the headline was off. But, it looks like the station had a issue.

[spiderpig]

4. Silver Streak was my first thought.

This is no comedy though. Also hoping the injured are OK.

[leftynyc]

3. Wow - looks like the train

went right through the station in Hoboken. Just checked with our Jersey folks here, all are accounted for thankfully. Good thoughts and prayers for everyone involved.

[karynnj]

20. To me it does not look like it went through the station, but through a very large covered area in

front of the indoor station. That is NOT to diminish what happened. The glass covered area is pretty big and at that time in the morning would have been filled with commuters going from the trains to the PATH station or the ferry which goes to NYC. Most commuters to not go into the indoor waiting area, but walk to the left under that glass covered area to stairs going down to PATH. It must have been utterly terrifying for anyone in the station or on that train.

If you look at the picture, the train stopped before it entered the building.

Decades ago, I commuted to work on the Erie Lakawana to Hoboken to the Path to get to NYC but rarely went into the station. The station itself is a pretty cool old building that I never really explored until years later when my husband, kids and I arrived in Hoboken from NYC just after one train going to our part of NJ left and the next was an hour later. One of our kids suggested we explore the station - which we did - reading all the landmark plaques.



http://www.american-rails.com/hoboken-terminal.html

[brooklynite]

5. Some perspective from a transportation planner...

It appears this was from one of the non-electric lines (Port Jervis or Pascack Valley), with a passenger car at the front end and the engine pushing from the back. Train apparently had brake failure (no idea if mechanical or human error), train jumped over the bumper blocks at the end of the track, crossed the passenger concourse (where potentially there were other passenger walking to the PATH train) while taking out someone the roof structural supports, and hit the wall of the waiting room.

[leftynyc]

6. Just got another local ABC report

Looks like up to 100 injured. An hour earlier would have been way worse.

[Jersey Devil]

11. It was the Pascack Valley line from Spring Valley NY

All trains coming into Hoboken are electric btw and all trains terminate at steel bumpers. It is the last stop for all the lines and there are no stations after Hoboken, where the rail lines all terminate. The last track is less than 100 yards from the Hudson River. The train had to be moving very fast to go through those steel bumpers.

[Jersey Devil]

16. Pardon, my mistake, the train was a diesel

I didn't realize it but it was the train my wife took every day until she retired and it definitely was a diesel.

[MicaelS]

15. No PTC.

The railroad was not equipped With PTC - Positive Train Control system that would have prevented this from happening. The Railroads have been whining, complaining and stalling to implement, and government keeps giving them extensions. The new deadline is 2018.

As a former conductor, I am willing to bet this was human related, not mechanical failure. Either the engineer become incapacitated or failed to maintain proper control. I am also willing to bet the death toll will rise. That station looks destroyed from the air.

As far as the question of brakes, service and emergency air brakes reservoirs are separate systems. Even if the service air failed, the emergency system should have still had air.

http://nbcnews.to/2cEihNI

[Jersey Devil]

18. Would PTC work on a diesel powered train?

I can see how it would work on an electric train, but how could PTC power down a diesel?

[MicaelS]

19. Locomotives are very computerized

These days. It would reduce the throttle setting electronically, but more importantly, it would apply the air brakes, to full emergency if necessary.

This is just another reason for DOT to force the RR to comply with implementing PTC as quickly as possible.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

24. Do the diesels power the wheels?

I thought the diesels power the generators, and the wheels are driven by electric motors.

[MicaelS]

25. You are correct.

There is no direct connection between the diesel engine and the electric traction motors that drive the wheels.

[Not Sure]

27. How does PTC work in a restricted speed situation?

I was trained on it a few years ago but I run yard engines so it's not something I deal with. I remember it forcing the train to slow down to a certain point but it wouldn't actually stop the train unless you were at the end of your authority, entering a Form B, etc. Since this was the end of the line, I would expect PTC to force the train to stop before actually reaching the bumping post.

[MicaelS]

28. I believe you are right.

I left the UP back in late 90s. So it was a long time ago when we discussed PTC.

[brooklynite]

7. Fun fact: earlier this year, Gov. Christie orders cuts in NJ transit capital spending...

...in a funding dispute with the State Legislature (hint - he wouldn't raise the gas tax).

[brooklynite]

8. UPDATE: At least three dead after Hoboken, N.J., train crash: NBC

Many critical injuries

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. Thanks, brooklynite.

I was thinking that if that terminal handles traffic from Port Jervis, this must be the old Erie Railroad station. Wikipedia informs me that it was actually the old Lackawanna Railroad station, and that the Erie started using it too in advance of their 1960 merger.*

Hoboken Terminal

The Wikipedia entry has already been updated.

The Phoebe Snow was a premiere passenger train that departed daily from the station.[7] In 1956, four years before its merger with the DL&W to form the Erie Lackawanna Railway, the Erie Railroad began shifting its trains from its Jersey City terminal to Hoboken.

From Trainorders: Passenger Trains > Accident in Hoboken

Eastern Railroad Discussion > Heads up people Hoboken train crash!

It is possible to pick up scanner traffic online for this event. Someone will provide the node.

ETA: Broadcastify, Hoboken Police, Fire, EMS, Public Works, and OEM

Thanks for the thread.

* Slaps forehead. Of course. Jersey City was the Erie's terminus.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. Not the time to joke. nt

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

14. Uncalled for...and where crisis situations are concerned, Christie deserves props

He was outstanding during Sandy and I'm sure he will be outstanding about this crash. His support of Trump is idiotic, for sure. However, he tosses politics out the window in a crisis. He deserves props for that much if nothing else.

[bucolic_frolic]

17. It's a perfectly legitimate if sarcastic question

lives were at risk in Bridgegate too

Lest we forget the poor elderly lady in the ambulance

[.99center]

22. Christie deserves outstanding praise for not politicizing disasters in his state

"However, he tosses politics out the window in a crisis"

Besides when he's creating a crisis for political reasons...

Is the bar set so low for Republican politicians that Democrats now praise them for not attacking Obama, and/or the party with smears blaming them for disasters?

Thanks Christie for not attempting to tie Obama and other Democrats to the disaster, outstanding work, good job acting like a decent human being and not shoving your foot in your mouth.

[bucolic_frolic]

23. Others have different opinions

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028197202

[brooklynite]

13. UPDATE: train was running late (ABC)

The train on NJ Transit's Pascack Valley line started in Spring Valley, New York, at 7:23 a.m. with a scheduled arrival time in Hoboken of 8:38 a.m., but was apparently running late. It crashed into the station at 8:45 a.m.

[TomCADem]

21. California Had a Similar Train Derailment

Investigation showed that conductor was busily texting at time of accident.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

26. You're referring to Chatsworth.

2008 Chatsworth train collision

The Chatsworth train collision occurred at 4:22 p.m. PDT (23:22 UTC) on Friday, September 12, 2008, when a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles, California. The scene of the accident was a curved section of single track on the Metrolink Ventura County Line just east of Stoney Point.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which investigated the cause of the collision, the Metrolink train ran through a red signal before entering a section of single track where the opposing freight train had been given the right of way by the train dispatcher. The NTSB faulted the Metrolink train's engineer for the collision, concluding that he was distracted by text messages he was sending while on duty.
....

Text messaging

KCAL-TV news showed a text message allegedly sent by the Metrolink train's engineer one minute before the crash.
Local television news broke the story that the Metrolink engineer was exchanging brief text messages with a teenage train enthusiast while operating the train, a violation of Metrolink rules according to the agency. The last message received from the engineer, time-stamped one minute before the collision, reportedly said, "yea ... usually @ north camarillo," apparently a reference to a town further down the line where the engineer expected to meet another train.

The NTSB did not recover the engineer's cellphone in the wreckage and said the teenagers were cooperating with the investigation, initially noting that similar rumors about an engineer using a cell phone from an investigation recently conducted in Boston were unfounded. After receiving the engineer's cell phone records under subpoena, the NTSB confirmed that the engineer was texting while on duty, but had not yet correlated the messages with the accident timeline. After completing a preliminary timeline, the NTSB placed the last text message sent by the engineer at 22 seconds before impact.

An NTSB representative refused to comment further on the preliminary timeline, which investigators were still refining. Two University of Southern California academics used the information in the NTSB statement to determine that the last text message sent by the Metrolink train's engineer would have been sent a few seconds after he had passed the last red signal.[51] This would make unconsciousness an unlikely cause for this error, since the engineer was able to compose and send the message; instead a psychology professor from the University of Utah raised the possibility that "inattentional blindness" caused the engineer to fail to see the signal.

The day after the NTSB confirmed the engineer was texting, and less than one week after the accident, the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously passed an emergency order to temporarily ban the use of cellular communication devices by train crew members, citing this accident and a previous San Francisco Municipal Railway accident where the train operator was using a cell phone. A week later, texting while driving an automobile was outlawed in California, effective January 1, 2009.

There was no federal regulation prohibiting cell phone use by train crews at the time of the accident, but the NTSB had recommended the Federal Railroad Administration address the issue in 2003, after concluding cell phone use by a freight train engineer contributed to a fatal head-on train collision in Texas in 2002. However, 19 days after the accident the FRA administrator issued Emergency Order No. 26 restricting the use of "personal electronic or electrical devices" by railroad operating employees.

On March 3, 2009 federal investigators released records showing that the train engineer Robert M. Sanchez had allowed a train enthusiast to ride in the cab several days before the crash, and that he was planning to let him run the train between four stations on the evening of the crash. "I'm gonna do all the radio talkin' ... ur gonna run the locomotive & I'm gonna tell u how to do it," Sanchez wrote in one text. Records also show Sanchez had received two prior warnings from his supervisors about improper use of cellphones while in the control cab.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

29. Data recorder recovered from Hoboken train

Data recorder recovered from Hoboken train

September 30 at 11:19 AM

Federal investigators have recovered the data recorder from the packed commuter-rail train that slammed into Hoboken Terminal early Thursday killing one person and injuring more than 100 others.

Investigators are hoping the recorder, along with footage from 22 station cameras,will offer insight into why the train was traveling at a high rate of speed as it entered the terminal. They also are assessing whether equipment failure, an incapacitated operator or other factors could have caused the crash.
....

Bella Dinh-Zarr, vice chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the speed limit on the track entering the station is 10 mph. ... Dinh-Zarr, who is part of the NTSB team in Hoboken, said one question investigators will be examining is whether positive train control (PTC), a federally mandated technology designed to automatically apply emergency brakes to runaway trains, could have prevented the crash. The NTSB has advocated for the technology for 40 years, she said. Railroads were required to adopt PTC by last December, before Congress passed a law allowing railroads to delay installation for three to five years.
....

New Jersey Transit said earlier this year that its entire network is equipped with an Automatic Train Control system. Such systems are meant to slow or stop a train in certain circumstances. ... “People have to look and see exactly how New Jersey Transit has implemented that system on that track and how far it extends into the terminal,” said Steven Ditmeyer, a former Federal Railroad Administration official. ... Such Automatic Train Control systems are a blunter and less sophisticated tool than the newer PTC systems. ... Ditmeyer noted, however, that it’s hard to know precisely how PTC would have worked in this case. “The Federal Railroad Administration rules on positive train control grant an exemption for terminals,” he said, though they are notoriously complicated environments.
....

Lori Aratani, Katherine Shaver, Faiz Siddiqui and Ashley Halsey III contributed to this report.

Audio file. Click to listen:

N.J. Train Crash Raises Questions About Rail Safety

September 29, 2016·4:33 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Steven Ditmeyer, former director of research and development at the Federal Railroad Administration, about the New Jersey Transit train crash.

Previously this morning:

Investigators Scour Hoboken, N.J., Train-Crash Site for Second Data Recorder

Bad condition of wrecked station is keeping team from retrieving second device

By Mike Vilensky

[e-mail]
http://twitter.com/mikevilensky

Updated Sept. 30, 2016 11:16 a.m. ET

Authorities at the site of Thursday’s deadly commuter train crash in Hoboken said Friday they were working to recover a second event-data recorder after pulling the first one from the wreckage at the heavily damaged station.