American Notes RAILROADS

The two trains were traveling on parallel tracks that merged to cross the Gunpowder River bridge north of Baltimore. Amtrak's twelve-car Washington-to- Boston Colonial, carrying 616 passengers, was speeding along at 105 m.p.h. or more. A Conrail train, consisting of three engines, was headed for Harrisburg, Pa. After the Conrail engineer apparently failed to heed a "distant signal" alerting him to slow down, he was unable to respond to a second stop signal and slid directly into the path of the onrushing Amtrak. The passenger train slammed into the rearmost Conrail engine, which exploded. The Amtrak engine caught fire and flipped on its side into a ditch, followed by two passenger cars that landed one atop the other. The remaining nine cars, with seats wrenched loose and baggage flying, derailed and scattered along the track. Passengers were trapped inside the wreckage for hours. All told, 15 people were killed, 176 injured, in the worst accident in Amtrak's history.

The collision raised serious issues for the National Transportation Safety Board, most of them focusing on the Conrail train crew. Who deliberately disabled an annoying whistle in the locomotive that would have warned of the danger? Why was a bulb missing on a critical cab signal light? The most important long-term question: Why are freight and high-speed passenger operations allowed to mix in the nation's busiest transportation corridor?