Federal investigators are eyeing a defect detector failure that may led to a May 10 derailment on North Southern’s Youngstown Line in New Castle, Pennsylvania.
A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board has determined that a detector found a critical alert several miles before the train reached New Castle, but that alert was not received by the crew aboard the train or the NS network operations center in Atlanta.
Instead, the train continued to travel for between 15 to 34 miles before derailing.
Had the alarm been received the crew would have been required to stop their train immediately.
The NTSB said the defect occurred on the 164th car of train 14M, which was en route from Conway Yard near Pittsburgh to Buffalo, New York.
The report said signal maintainers working on the track two days before the derailment removed and reinstalled components of the defect detector but did so incorrectly.
That led the detector to transmit inaccurate data to the Atlanta Center regarding the defect.
The component parts in question has since been reinstalled and tested to determine they are working properly.
Nine cars of the 14M derailed in the late night incident, cars 165 through 172. The train was traveling 28 miles per hour at the time of the derailment.
Investigators recovered a burned-off bearing from the wreckage.
No one was injured in the derailment and just one car in the train was carrying a hazardous substance.