2 Trains Collide in Yorba Linda : 3 Crewmen Hurt in Leap From Engine

Three railroad workers were injured Tuesday as they leaped from their eastbound freight train traveling at an estimated 45 m.p.h. moments before it crashed into the side of a westbound train loaded with cars and trucks, authorities said.

Seventeen railroad cars and a pair of 200-ton locomotives derailed in the 4:08 a.m. collision between two Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Co. trains in Yorba Linda, a company spokesman said.

At least half a dozen Santa Fe freight trains and two Amtrak passenger trains were rerouted through Pasadena as authorities worked to clear the tracks, Santa Fe spokesman Michael A. Martin said.

The mainline track running through Santa Ana Canyon, paralleling the Riverside Freeway, will be cleared for normal train traffic by today, he added.

The eastbound train severed the westbound train nine cars back from its lead locomotive, just missing a tanker car filled with 194,000 pounds of highly flammable naptha, Orange County Fire Department Capt. Hank Raymond said.

“That’s where we got lucky,” Raymond noted. More than three dozen firefighters and two hazardous materials teams responded to the crash, he said.

Injured crew members told paramedics that a semaphore signal was blinking a red stop warning to the eastbound train less than 100 feet from where the trains collided, Raymond said.

A Santa Fe spokesman said that inspectors were checking whether all signals along the tracks were functioning properly. The westbound train was switching over in a 15-m.p.h. zone to a side track to make room for the approaching eastbound train on the mainline, company officials explained.

Officials at the scene said that three crewmen in the lead locomotive on the eastbound train frantically set the brakes on their engine just before they leaped from the train in the pre-dawn darkness.

“They were pretty shook up,” Raymond said. “That’s pretty traumatic, jumping from a train at 45 m.p.h. into the dark.”

“You don’t land too gracefully,” said Herb S. Duke, Santa Fe train master, pointing to the rocky embankment where the men landed.

The collision site near La Palma Avenue and Weir Canyon Road was a scene of twisted wreckage. Half a dozen rail cars lay on their sides, a neat row of Ford pickup trucks with smashed windshields inside. The powerful impact threw two large rail cars about 50 feet off the tracks and into a gully.

“The cars started toppling over like dominoes,” one firefighter said.

Santa Fe officials estimated total damage to the trains, tracks, equipment and freight at between $500,000 and $750,000. Most of the loss was due to damaged freight, Martin said.

The three injured men riding in the lead locomotive on the eastbound train--engineer Mark L. Rich, 40, of Los Angeles, and conductor Robert D. Eckerd 37, and brakeman Gary M. Mitchell, 37, both of La Habra--were treated for cuts and bruises and released at local hospitals, authorities said.

The engineer on the westbound train, Mike Casteneda, 34, of Seal Beach, was taken to a hospital complaining of chest pains; he was also treated and released.

Four other crew members were taken to a hospital for a precautionary checkup and released, Santa Fe officials said.

All eight crew members on the two trains will be tested for drugs and alcohol, standard company policy after major accidents and a requirement of the Federal Railroad Administration, company spokesman Martin said. He added that results from the tests won’t be known for another week.

Inspectors with the railroad administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were at the scene investigating the cause of the collision.

Black box recorders similar to those required in passenger airplane cockpits will be reviewed over the next several days to determine the trains’ exact speed and other factors that may have caused an accident, Martin said.

“We have no way of knowing how fast they were going until the tapes are analyzed,” he added.

Inspectors will also listen to any radio messages broadcast from the locomotives before the collision, Martin said.

The eastbound train was going to Chicago from Los Angeles carrying truck trailers loaded with mail parcels on 42 flatbed cars, Martin said. The westbound train was headed from Kansas City to Los Angeles with 72 cars carrying mostly Ford pickup trucks and automobiles.

Because of the curving track through much of the Santa Ana Canyon, the speed limit on the main line is 45 m.p.h., Martin said.

The Yorba Linda smashup was the first major train accident along Santa Fe’s Santa Ana Canyon tracks in 10 years.

In 1979, a westbound freight train lost a wheel, derailing 14 flatcars, including a trailer loaded with U.S. mail. There were no injuries.

In an unrelated accident shortly before noon Tuesday, a Santa Fe freight train northbound in Fullerton smashed head-on into a truck rigged to run on the rails, city officials said. Two Santa Fe contract workers spraying herbicides and insecticides leaped to safety as their truck burst into flames on impact.

Firefighters quickly extinguished the fire, Sylvia Palmer, a Fullerton city spokeswoman, said. The two men were unhurt and no chemicals were spilled. No one on the train was injured and there was no other damage, she said. After stopping, the train continued on its way.