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The Nation - News from March 26, 1987

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New drug tests on the Conrail train crew involved in last January’s collision with an Amtrak passenger train near Baltimore showed that one of the crewmen had used PCP as well as marijuana, officials said. The additional tests, conducted on blood and urine samples, confirmed the presence of some amounts of marijuana in Conrail engineer Ricky Gates and brakeman Edward Cromwell, but also traces of phencyclidine, also known as PCP, an illegal hallucinogenic chemical, in the urine of Cromwell, according to federal investigators. The train collision Jan. 4 was the worst accident in Amtrak’s history, killing 16 people and injuring 175 others.

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