2 Killed as Freight Trains Collide Near Buffalo, N.Y.

Two crew members were killed and seven others were injured Friday when two freight trains crashed head-on 25 miles south of Buffalo, authorities said.

The crash ripped the first engine of the 50-car southbound CSX Transportation Inc. train in two, splitting off a 75-foot section and spewing metal shards over a wide area of snow-covered woods.

A diesel power plant the size of a compact car was shredded. Batteries from inside the broken locomotive were hurled 40 feet up an embankment, officials said.

‘Kept Calling for Ambulances’

“When I got down there, one guy was pinned in the train and one guy was laid up on the cab and one was over the rail,” East Concord Fire Chief Ronald Miller said. “We just kept calling for . . . more ambulances. After that, it was just chaos.”

Rescuers from a nearby ski resort, hampered by deep snow on the ground, used snowmobiles and sleds to reach the victims, and firefighters cut down trees with chain saws so a medical helicopter could land.

The two dead men, an engineer and a brakeman, and the two crew members most seriously injured were in the cab of the 21-car northbound train, Erie County Sheriff’s Chief Gerald Mack said.

‘Said a Prayer’

“I just looked up and saw it coming toward me,” said a crewman on the northbound train, also operated by CSX. “Then I dove to the floor and said a prayer.”

Five men were aboard the larger southbound train, Mack said, and four crewmen were on the northbound train.

Mack said it was not known why the trains were on the same track.

Owen Lennon, CSX yardmaster in Buffalo, said that one train was supposed to take a siding in Springville, but “we’re not sure exactly which one as yet.”

Investigators from the Federal Railroad Administration were sent to the scene, spokesman Thomas Simpson said.