Train Hits Truck in Indiana, Killing Driver; 15 Injured, None Seriously

An Amtrak train carrying 180 passengers collided with a truck at a crossing Tuesday, killing the truck’s driver and slightly injuring 15 people on the train, authorities said.

It was the second train-truck collision at the crossing in a year.

One of the two locomotives and one of the 15 cars in Amtrak’s Broadway Limited derailed but remained upright. Passengers on the New York-to-Chicago run were transferred to another train.

The crash happened in an industrial area on the city’s west side, two miles south of Lake Michigan. Amtrak spokesman Howard Robertson said the truck was driven around lowered gates on Conrail tracks and rolled through flashing lights on CSX Transportation tracks where the train rammed it, separating the cab from the flatbed trailer loaded with aluminum coil.

A CSX freight train was stopped on a track about 300 feet east of the crossing, partly blocking the driver’s view of the approaching Amtrak train, officials said.

Truck driver Donna J. Gibbs, 36, died at Methodist Hospital in Gary, officials said. The railroad reported that 13 passengers and two crew members suffered minor injuries.

The train is authorized to travel at 79 m.p.h. in the area, but Robertson said it had slowed to about 60 m.p.h.

A train-truck collision at the same intersection on Jan. 21 involved another Amtrak train. No one was hurt in that incident.

It was the third Amtrak derailment in a month. On Nov. 23, 16 people were injured, none seriously, when a Seattle-to-Chicago train went off the tracks near Boise, Ida. On Nov. 30, about 70 people suffered mainly bumps and bruises when an Amtrak train struck a tractor-trailer truck and derailed near Kissimmee, Fla. On Sept. 22, several cars of the Sunset Limited plunged off a bridge in Alabama, killing 47 people.