Probe of Train Wreck Focuses on Tire Tracks

Investigators analyzed tire tracks in the mud Wednesday to determine whether the truck driver at the center of a deadly Amtrak crash had tried to go around the crossing gates to beat the train.

The official death toll was lowered from 13 to 11, and the chief federal investigator touched off a public squabble by accusing the passenger railroad of hampering efforts to determine who had died and who was still missing.

Tire marks were found on the road, on timbers at the crossing and in the mud along the shoulder of the road, said Bob Lauby, director of the National Transportation Safety Board’s office of railroad safety.

“The tire marks may belong to the truck, they may not,” Lauby said Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, Amtrak’s chairman, said the train engineer had accused the truck driver of trying to go around the lowered crossing gates instead of waiting for the train to pass.

But John Goglia of the NTSB said the engineer had been too shaken to provide a good account of what happened.

“We will wait to get that from the engineer ourselves,” he said.

The truck driver, John Stokes, told investigators that he had already proceeded into the crossing when the gates came down.

Goglia said Stokes, who suffered only minor injuries, underwent a breath test for alcohol that “didn’t show he went over the limit.”

NTSB spokesman Jamie Finch explained the revised death toll by saying two people had walked away from the wreck after the accident and had been assumed dead because they hadn’t been accounted for.

Finch also said all 216 people aboard the train had been accounted for Wednesday.

Amtrak denied it had been anything less than completely cooperative since Monday night’s collision.

And Goglia later backpedaled from his earlier criticism.

“It would be inappropriate to leave the impression that Amtrak was failing in its duties to passengers,” he said.