Runaway Rail Car Rolls for 16 Miles

A runaway rail car apparently set loose by vandals rolled 16 miles from Pacoima to Glendale Monday before colliding with two locomotives, slightly injuring one rail worker, authorities said.

Railroad officials apparently were unaware that the car, filled with sand and traveling at least 25 m.p.h., was loose until an anonymous caller reported seeing it moving south on tracks near Burbank Airport.

The car slammed into the two locomotives at about 9:15 a.m., roughly 200 feet north of the intersection of San Fernando Road and Sonora Avenue, said Jack Jenkins, superintendent for Southern Pacific Transportation Co.

Jenkins and other railroad officials said the car, which weighed more than 80 tons, could have derailed as it crossed a number of streets along the route, a mix of residential and commercial corridors.

They downplayed the seriousness of the accident, saying automatic crossing guard arms went down properly at all intersections as the rail car passed by. Workers did not have time to switch the car to another track before the collision, officials said.

“Given time, we would notify everybody and derail the car in the most controlled manner,” Jenkins said. “But in this case, you don’t have the time to sit down and make a whole lot of plans with it. . . . The car was moving and we just wanted to minimize the damage.”

The Federal Railroad Administration will determine whether to conduct a full-scale investigation of the accident, said Inspector George Soliz.

The rail car was at the end of a nine-car train heading from Van Nuys to Saugus. When the crew stopped about 8:50 a.m. to pick up another car along a rail line in Pacoima serving several industries, vandals apparently uncoupled the last car, Jenkins said.

As the train left Pacoima, the lone car remained and began its backward descent. The crew was unaware that the car was left behind, said Mike Brown, a Southern Pacific spokesman. Railroad authorities were notified it had become a runaway after the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division received a call from a resident.

Southern Pacific officials could not explain the apparent discrepancy between their estimate of the rail car’s speed--based on the grade and the car’s characteristics--and the somewhat greater amount of time it should have taken the car to travel 16 miles at 25 m.p.h. They said they were unsure exactly what time the car began rolling.

Jenkins said the three-man crew moving the locomotives from the Los Angeles switchyard to Burbank was notified “a few seconds” before the rail car struck. The crew threw the engines in reverse to back up the

locomotives and absorb the impact, but at the last moment turned off the engines and jumped when they realized the car was going to collide, he said.

Switchman Louie Roche, 60, of Burbank was released from St. Josephs Medical Center in Burbank after being treated for minor injuries, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The locomotive and rail car sustained about $48,000 in damage.