Cajon Pass Descent Shows Deadly Perils Trains Face

The freight train’s descent through the treacherous Cajon Pass has not even begun, and there’s already trouble with the brakes.

It is late in a long day for the young crew, on a trip that illustrates the hazards, the frailties and the caprices of running heavy freight trains down one of the steepest and longest mountain grades in the country.

It was along this same track that another Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train lost its brakes on Feb. 1 and hurtled off a curve at more than 60 mph, killing two of its three crew members and igniting an inferno of toxic chemicals, diesel fuel, wreckage and cargo that would burn for days.

The same kind of freight train--this one stretching over a mile and carrying such products as plastic pipe, fiber board, corn and soybean meal--is about to make a run down the same mountain grade.

Ominously, the train is encountering one of the same problems as the train that crashed Feb. 1. A safety device that allows the engineer to activate emergency brakes from the rear of the train--in case they can’t be applied from the front--is not working.

When this problem surfaced Feb. 1, the doomed train proceeded anyway. At the time, there was no law requiring the device. Had it been working, federal safety officials say, that engineer might have been able to stop the runaway.

After that crash, federal safety officials ordered Santa Fe to install the devices--and make sure they work--on all trains heading down “the hill,” as the Cajon Pass is called by railroad workers. The only exception is those trains with helper locomotives or staffed cabooses at the end of the train, equipped to initiate emergency braking on their own.

The National Transportation Safety Board had been campaigning for the mandatory use of the remote-controlled braking devices for years. But the Federal Railroad Administration--which regulates safety issues--had not aggressively pushed for their use until the recent wreck in these mountains, according to the NTSB. Over the past 27 months, 10 train crashes in the United States might have been prevented had the devices been in place, NTSB officials say.

The railroad agency defended its record as one of “aggressive action.”

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On this day, 31-year-old engineer Jim McCabe is radioing his bosses that the two-way, end-of-train device, or EOT, is malfunctioning. The radio signal from the locomotive is not being picked up by the device, so there is no way for the engineer to activate the emergency brakes from the back of the train.

Following the new safety protocol, he has stopped here, at the top of the 24-mile-long pass, and within minutes, supervisors are climbing aboard his cab to fix the problem. Since the Feb. 1 tragedy, railroad officials have been sitting in utility vehicles alongside the tracks, in round-the-clock shifts, ready to resolve any such problems before trains head down.

The supervisors replace the lunch pail-size electronic control box in the locomotive with a new one. The problem remains. So they replace the device at the back of the train.

McCabe flips a small red toggle switch. A mile behind them, a valve opens, air rushes out of the brake line and everyone is satisfied that all is now working properly.

“Before the accident, I would have continued even if the device wasn’t working,” McCabe says. “There were no rules then that said I couldn’t, even though I know there would have been some risk.”

Now, finally, McCabe’s train can join the parade of about 40 freights that groan down the mountain daily. It is a kind of railroad rodeo where the challenge is to keep these steel bulls in check.

His mission is both routine and precarious: Don’t let the train turn into a runaway.

All the elements of physics are working against him: More than 5,000 tons are pushing against his lead locomotive as the tracks dip down the 3.2% grade. If the brakes fail completely, a train this size will accelerate 36 mph each minute, leaving crew members with little to do but pray.

The train’s main brakes are the air brakes on each car, activated by a pressurized line not much larger than a garden hose that runs the length of the train.

McCabe also can slow the train by reversing the locomotives’ electric motors so they add resistance to the drive wheels. Alone, these “dynamic” brakes are not sufficient to stop McCabe’s downhill train.

His goal is to set the air brakes just enough so that he can use his dynamic braking to fine-tune the train’s downhill speed. For engineers, it is “finding the balance.”

It’s a tricky maneuver. If he doesn’t set the brakes enough, the train’s momentum will overpower the dynamic brakes and he will have to use a lot of his air--perhaps all of it--to slow the train as it quickly gains speed. On the other hand, if he sets the air brakes too much, the train might slow too much on gentler portions of the grade, and he would have to power-up his locomotive to pull the train against its own brakes.

Because of its weight, the speed limit will be 15 mph for this train. If it reaches 20 mph, the railroad requires the engineer to stop the train with its emergency brakes. If it reaches 25 mph, there is hell to pay and the engineer could lose his operating certificate.

Even before he begins the downhill run, McCabe--as is his practice--immediately sets the air brakes minimally by releasing eight pounds of pressure from the line. He then nudges the throttle forward with such finesse that the 77 cars behind him gently follow suit without so much as a bump as the long chain of rail cars is pulled taut.

The top of the grade is shaped like a shallow dish, and McCabe eases his locomotive over the far lip, increasing the speed to about 10 mph as the train crests.

The sun is setting now, leaving the canyon a shadowed slice between the snow-flecked San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.

As McCabe starts down the hill, a track signal light glows bright red, telling him to stop. A radio check with the railroad dispatcher more than 2,000 miles away in Schaumberg, Ill., finds he doesn’t know of any problem, so he allows McCabe to proceed, keeping his speed slow enough to stop in time for whatever might confront him.

As the back half of his train peaks over the crest, the downhill slope causes the cars to bunch up behind the locomotive. Slight concussions are felt in the cab as the slack is gathered, car by car. McCabe reverses his throttle into dynamic braking, to assist the air brakes in countering the train’s attempt to accelerate downhill.

His speedometer tells McCabe that he is neither gaining nor losing speed, but traveling a steady 12 mph.

Inside the comfortable cab, there is no sense of the weight of the cars, pushing from behind. Unlike the old days, this cab is insulated and surprisingly quiet, the roar of the diesel electric engines just so much “white noise.” There is a small bathroom in the nose of the locomotive, and a small refrigerator stocked with drinking water.

McCabe and his conductor, Ray Sullivan, 26, sit in soft leather chairs, their duffel bags from an overnight stay in Barstow stowed on the floor behind them.

McCabe uses all of his dynamic braking to keep the train in check. So far, so good; the train is balanced.

When he encounters another red signal, McCabe decides to slow the train further. He releases two more pounds of pressure from the brake line, to squeeze the air brakes still more. The train slows to a bare crawl.

But now, even after having committed half of his available air braking power and using all of his dynamic braking, gauges show the train is accelerating at a rate of 2 mph every minute.

The situation is roughly equivalent to stopping a car on a downhill road, pressing the brake pedal halfway to the floor, and finding that the car is beginning to creep forward and gain speed. It is testimony to the 5,000 tons behind him.

“He’s in a position he doesn’t want to be in,” says Jim McHood, a road foreman accompanying a guest in the locomotive. Because McCabe already has used more air brake pressure than he expected, “he’s got less margin of error,” McHood explains.

McCabe reassures the others that he’s still in good shape.

But in just a few seconds, the train has accelerated from a near standstill to 8 mph--more than half its allowable speed--and McCabe’s focus is split between his speedometer and the tracks ahead. He lets out another two pounds of air pressure to set the brakes even harder.

“I’m working too hard,” McCabe mutters, his eyes darting from one dial to another, his hands wrapped around the control levers. “Normally, that initial air set at the summit is all I need, along with the dynamics, to get me down the hill.”

*

The red track lights have upset his routine and confronted McCabe with a problem inherent with air brakes: Although you can apply them incrementally, the only way to release them is altogether. If you release them, you let all the air out of the line, and it takes up to 15 minutes for the compressor to rebuild the pressure and restore the brakes.

McCabe either can leave the brakes set as they are and run the risk of stalling the train when the grade diminishes, or he can release the brakes completely, in which case he’ll have only the less powerful dynamic braking to slow the train while the air pressure in the line recharges.

By now, McCabe is approaching the curve where two of his comrades died in February. In contrast to their terrifying runaway, however, McCabe still is creeping along because of the track’s red warning lights.

When the Feb. 1 runaway was re-created on a locomotive simulator at the railroad company’s training center outside Kansas City, Kan., the train approached the Draw Bar Flats curve, where the fatal accident took place, at more than 60 mph--a fact not lost on the passengers inside McCabe’s locomotive.

McCabe has made more than 200 runs down the hill during his two years as an engineer, but these days--after the crash--the run is more solemn.

“Now, every time I go down the mountain, I see it as something to be respected,” he says. “I don’t think anybody will ever forget about what happened at Draw Bar Flats. It’s kind of like a grave site. It’s spooky. It reminds you just how serious things can get if you lose control of the train.

“Someone’s talking about putting a little memorial sign here, a constant reminder so we will never forget, and to remind us to respect the mountain.”

As he passes through the crash site, the next track signal is green. With his brakes still set, McCabe throttles the train up to 15 mph. He decides to release his air brakes in a mile or so--and use his dynamic brakes to control the train--so he can recharge his air line.

Seven miles down the mountain, where the downhill grade eases to 2%, he brings his train to a complete stop by letting the last of the pressure out of the brake line. He then releases the brakes so the line can recharge.

In just seconds, the train accelerates to 10 mph, even with full dynamic braking. The speedometer shows the train now is going 11 mph, then 12, 13, 14, 15.

McCabe watches the air pressure readout as it, too, increases. Because the train is continuing to accelerate even with full dynamic braking, and because McCabe believes he has recharged his brake system sufficiently to handle the gentler grade into San Bernardino, he resets his air brakes to slow the train.

The speed limit along this straighter section of track is now 30 mph, and the downhill grade lessens to about 1%.

McCabe has plenty of braking power. The worst is behind him, and he cruises into the train yard in San Bernardino to drop off his passengers.

“I was a little nervous,” says his boss, McHood. “But he did good. Real good. These young engineers know what they’re doing. I just hope they don’t get too cocky after a few years.”

Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this story.