Metrolink Maintenance Mishap to Cause Delays

Metrolink trains between San Bernardino and Los Angeles will be running slower this morning after a wreck of runaway rail cars from a San Dimas construction site injured one worker Sunday and damaged the rail bed, officials said.

The National Transportation Safety Board is looking into the crash that sent Jeff Manasco, 32, to San Dimas Community Hospital, where he was in critical condition Sunday evening.

Another worker jumped clear of the collision, and a driver whose pickup truck was struck at a Covina train crossing three miles from where the accident began was treated for minor injuries, Covina police said.

Manasco, an employee of a Metrolink subcontractor, was working aboard a 150,000-gallon tank car that was pumping concrete to shore up a sagging rail bed when the tank car and truck that pulls it broke loose and rolled away, officials said.

The vehicles plowed first into a rail-mounted tree trimmer several hundred yards down the track, embedding the trimmer’s cherry picker into the truck. A worker aboard the trimmer jumped clear, but the impact threw Manasco from the train and shoved the tree-trimmer into motion too, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Tom Pavlich.

The runaway vehicles--truck, tanker and tree trimmer--barreled along toward a grade crossing where workers had shut off the lights, bells and crossing arms so they could work without disrupting traffic at the crossing, said Covina Police Sgt. Pat Buchanan.

The vehicles struck a pickup truck just crossing the tracks, Buchanan said. Driver Paul Raya, 33, escaped his crushed truck with minor injuries.

“It took us two hours to find out what vehicle was where,” Buchanan said.